Magma through Leaves
by A238
Summary: "At first, I thought this was nothing more than a plan gone awry, some bizarre twist of fate. I couldn't think of a better explanation. After all, how else would one of Iwa's jinchuuriki end up here, in the arms of their greatest enemy?" AU, OC
1. Prologue: Before Dusk's Storm

_Hi, I'm A238._

_The prologue in this is currently identical to the one in the original._

_For purposes of testing the waters with the redone version of the first chapter, I'm just adding this in for a bit more background on all the things._

_For more information on the redo, see the next chapter_

* * *

Prologue: Before Dusk's Storm

* * *

"It's quite ironic," a wizened voice noted.

A pair of blue eyes swept over the room, right to left, away from the bundle in his arms, towards old brown orbs with an inquisitive gaze.

"What do you mean?"

The older of the two men chuckled quietly. "There you sit, the greatest champion of a war we did not initiate, wanted nothing to do with, yet nonetheless fought and won, holding the firstborn son of one of the enemy's strongest warriors."

He was sitting in his office with a month-old child that was not his own asleep in his arms, a child, that by right of birth, was the heir to a man that had once attempted to take his life on the battlefields of the Third Shinobi World War. And he had almost succeeded. In the book of Namikaze Minato, Sarutobi Hiruzen's analysis of the situation was very much correct. The situation was quite ironic.

The younger man chuckled himself. "I suppose you are right."

"This does beg another question, however," Hiruzen said, amiable tone quickly slipping into the realms of the serious. The Sandaime Hokage sat himself on the worn couch below the lone window of the office. "I trust your judgement almost implicitly, Minato. It is why I named you Hokage in my stead. While you are doubtlessly a powerful shinobi, your trustworthiness is the reason I chose you over my other students."

Hiruzen exhaled a sigh. Minato understood the reasoning. Though Jiraiya-sensei had taught him almost everything he knew, the Sandaime had taken him under his wing over Orochimaru. It was a sore point in the upper echelons of Konoha – though it was quite possibly simply between himself, the Sannin and the Sandaime – that the Snake Sannin held some resentment towards him for ascending to the station of Hokage instead of him.

"My question is this: why?" Hiruzen questioned. "I understand the motivations for acquiring another jinchuuriki out from under another village's nose, especially that of Iwagakure, but this could throw the entire shinobi world into all kinds of turmoil. If they discover this child and his heritage, it will, without a doubt bring some kind of retaliation, perhaps even another war."

"I understand, Hiruzen-sama, but I am Hokage now. This is my decision to make, and I am well aware of the potential consequences of my actions," Minato stated respectfully. He was not a militant man by any stretch of the imagination. The chain of command in Konoha was enough of a mixed bag as it was. Rank meant nothing in comparison to experience, the Sandaime trumping anyone he knew in that regard, but he was not in a mood to be trifled with. His wife was due sometime today, anytime within the next six hours. He was about to become a father, and he was greatly preferential to keeping his relatively jovial mood intact.

The Sandaime nodded his comprehension. "I respect your decision, Minato, and I am not questioning its validity. As you said, you are Hokage and it is well within your power to make such choices. I am simply trying to understand your reasoning."

"Very well, Hiruzen-sama," Minato consented, "you may continue."

The former Hokage cleared his throat before continuing, leaning forward from the couch. "I can't help but wonder the reason that you accepted the responsibility of this child for. I don't know if you knew his father well or not, but I cannot imagine a reason other than that for taking charge of the boy."

Minato shook his head with a wistful sigh. It was a long time ago that he had first told Kushina-chan, and she was the only one he had told. It was an odd story, and not a proud tale by any means, but rather one of defeat.

"I didn't know the boy's father well," Minato admitted, "I only met him once before, out on one of the first skirmishes between us and Iwa in Kusa. I had routed most of the enemy forces with my Hiraishin, but every time I got close to his unit, he would prevent me from getting anywhere near his shinobi with very powerful Doton jutsu. I think he could sense where my kunai ended up, because he would be waiting for me every time I showed up nearby."

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall an event such as this in any of your field reports back then."

Minato gave the older man a pensive half-smile. "The Hiraishin isn't exactly well documented, just known about in rumours more than anything, which is exactly the way I would like to keep it. I considered putting in the details at the time, but jotting down any sort of knowledge of a counter for my most advanced technique on paper seemed a little bit counterproductive, don't you think?"

"Indeed," the Sandaime agreed with a humorous grin before resuming his expression of deliberation as Minato continued.

"Anyway, it went back and forth for nearly an hour, and he was outlasting me by quite a way. The Hiraishin doesn't use huge amounts of chakra, but using it dozens of times in quick succession takes its toll."

Hiruzen nodded. "I can imagine."

"So, he kept warding me off while retreating, working on getting his men to safety before he actually took me on. And he almost destroyed me that day."

The former Hokage's contemplative expression turned into outright surprise. "I would never have thought Iwa had such a powerful warrior, enough to defeat even you with the Hiraishin."

Minato shook his head. "I didn't either. It was probably my own fault I lost anyway. I thought he was just a defensive specialist, using elemental ninjutsu for barriers, and it made me kind of cocky back then. I thought as long as I could get within range, I could blow him away if the opportunity presented itself. I was wrong."

"Well, obviously he didn't kill you. Otherwise, this conversation could have never taken place," the Sandaime observed conjecturally.

"How very perceptive of you, Hiruzen-sama," Minato commented with a sly smirk.

He chuckled as the older man muttered something about sarcastic young upstarts before continuing.

"Well, nothing I tried worked. It wasn't that I couldn't hit him or anything; I just couldn't get past the defence. He used Doton jutsu to stop projectiles, along with some kind of lava manipulation to stop taijutsu and close-range ninjutsu from working as well, simply because I couldn't get close enough to him without burning myself half to death. Add that kind of impenetrable defence to very powerful ranged ninjutsu and crushing taijutsu, and that's a deadly mix. By the end of that hour, the only thing to do was to dodge."

The Sandaime folded his hands beneath his chin in consideration.

"It just went downhill from the outset. I couldn't fight him close-quarters, I was running out of chakra, and he wasn't running out of anything. In the last few moments, he hit me directly just once, and that was enough to break a few ribs. I managed to stab him in the side when he struck, but it didn't actually do anything. He just pulled the kunai out and the wound sealed. I kind of only realised how screwed I was in that moment."

"Then what happened?" the Sandaime inquired.

"Nothing at all," Minato replied bluntly, "literally nothing. He didn't attack me, didn't finish me off or blow me away. Nothing like that in the slightest. He just looked at me for a few moments, asked for my name and left when I gave it to him."

"How strange," Hiruzen remarked. "It is a rare thing to find a shinobi with power of the magnitude to defeat the Hiraishin, but to find such a shinobi with a sense of mercy is even rarer still."

"I don't think it was mercy," Minato divulged. At the time, he hadn't really considered the implications of being left alive by such a powerful enemy. He had just been thankful to be alive, to have crawled out of the wasteland they had turned that corner of the majestic grasslands of Kusa into with his limbs still attached. That in and of itself was one of the greatest blessings he had received – the others being Kushina and the conception of their first, but certainly not their last, child. But, at its core, the whole event struck him as bizarre.

The Sandaime gave him a puzzled look from the couch. "What do you mean?"

Minato leant back into his chair slightly, considering. Iwa shinobi were highly militant, almost to the point of marching to their deaths if they were ordered to. Even back then, he had been known to them as a high-class threat, eventually enough to warrant a standing flee-on-sight order, but at the time it had been kill-on-sight. The one who had managed to defeat his Hiraishin with defence alone disobeyed orders when he had the chance to fulfil them. He had stared at the chance to turn the tide of not only the Third Shinobi World War, but to shift the entire balance of power in the Elemental Nations altogether. Yet he had not taken the chance.

Minato didn't like to think of his role in the war as essential, but Jiraiya-sensei and the Sandaime both considered his role instrumental to Konoha's survival. He was loath to think he was so vital to the war effort back in the day, but in reflection, he could understand the thinking of his teachers: without him, the war could have gone very differently. So why had he been allowed to live that day?

"I think he just wanted a challenge," Minato completed his thought.

He didn't wait for the Sandaime to pursue the conversation, continuing anyway. "I was fighting against an opponent easily on the level of the Kage. He was no pushover, and ordinary ninja couldn't hope to stand up to him, even a small army of them. He was one of those few shinobi in a generation with just the right mix of skills that they could decimate an enemy force in an instant, knock their defences wide open and pave the way for the troops to clean up. He fit the bill for someone bored with fighting battles against lesser opponents and wanting a challenge, so I guess he just wanted someone he could fight with on an even playing field."

"And that was enough for him to entrust you with his only child?" Hiruzen asked.

The Yondaime Hokage looked down to the sleeping boy in his arms. He was a peaceful little thing, content to merely exist and rest within the world. The innocence of a child was a precious thing, so fleeting in the world they lived in. So very fragile and so easily stolen, it could never last. They all had to grow up eventually.

"He said something to me before the sealing ritual," Minato said, eyes unmoving from the child. "He said that Iwa wasn't safe anymore, that Konoha was better for him than their home."

He could practically hear the older man's brow furrow. "He had an entire clan back in Iwa, its founders. Why would he not trust his own family to take care of his child?"

"I thought I knew," Minato answered uncertainly. "At first, I thought this was nothing more than a plan gone awry, some bizarre twist of fate. I couldn't think of another explanation. After all, how else would one of Iwa's jinchuuriki end up here, in the arms of their greatest enemy?"

He shook his head. "Perhaps it doesn't matter, but whatever the reason, it was enough to drive him to hand his son over to the greatest enemy of his village. That should tell us enough as it is."

The Sandaime stroked his greying beard, mind obviously at work. "The man was wounded when you arrived, correct?"

"Mortally, yes," Minato confirmed. It had taken him the better part of two days to reach the location in the western wastelands of Tsuchi no Kuni, out in what was almost entirely uncharted territory, save for a handful of old fortresses in the area built almost two centuries ago. He had arrived to the marker to find the man slowly dying, wasting away from grievous injuries. That was the reason for the sealing in the first place. He didn't have much practice in the sealing of such huge quantities of energy, but his knowledge of the art of fuinjutsu was enough to see him through. He had transferred the bijuu from father to son at the cost of the father's life.

The former Hokage continued stroking his beard as he began to speak his thoughts. "As you said, whatever drove him to seek us out was dangerous; more likely than not, it was the same reason for which he was wounded. From this, we can assume he thought his child, a jinchuuriki, would be safest with his enemy."

The Sandaime stood, looking out through the window and down towards the village. It was a clear, picturesque afternoon. The sun was beginning its descent from its place in the sky, rays of light occasionally dimmed by the passing of a lonely white cloud. The hustle and bustle of the village streets was tapering off from the midday influx, but would soon peak again as night approached. The shadows were growing longer, and the noon heat was fading away. The day was comfortable, and he was comfortable along with it, content with his situation, but Minato could see from the older man's increasingly rigid posture, from the tightening of the hands clasped firmly behind his back, that he would have a reason to be uncomfortable.

"The jinchuuriki is the key," Hiruzen concluded.

"You mean, the reason he gave his son to us, was to keep him safe from someone who wants the bijuu?" Minato filled in the blanks with the words left unsaid.

The Sandaime sighed. "I believe so."

The Yondaime leaned further back into his chair, almost slumping. It was his long years of training and even longer years of self-discipline that stopped him from slouching completely. This was not good.

"I would be careful in the coming days, Minato," Hiruzen cautioned, still facing the expansive view of the village. "Whatever has begun is not yet over."

"Agreed," Minato stated simply.

A knock at the door of his office interrupted the sudden fog of melancholy that set over them.

"Come in," both men said in unison.

Minato looked at Hiruzen oddly.

"Force of habit," the older man chuckled with a rub of his neck.

An ANBU agent clad in a mask he wasn't quite familiar with and the standard grey uniform entered. The agent kneeled quickly. "Hokage-sama, Kushina-sama and Biwako-sama request your presence at the prepared location."

Minato was pleasantly surprised. "Already?"

"Hai, Hokage-sama," the agent confirmed succinctly.

Minato nodded. "Dismissed."

The agent flickered away in a chakra-enhanced blur of motion, disappearing in less than a second.

He shifted his gaze back to Hiruzen. "It seems that time is upon us already."

"Do not worry about the child, Minato. I will look after him until you get back," the Sandaime assured.

With a smile, the Yondaime handed the child to the Sandaime and opened his window, stepping onto the sill out of recently-acquired habit.

"Will any of us ever use the door, I wonder," Hiruzen observed. Minato chuckled in agreement and prepared to flash out of view.

"Oh, you never mentioned the child's name," the Sarutobi remembered.

"Oh, yeah, I didn't," Minato recalled. "His name is Koan."

As the Yondaime Hokage disappeared in a flash of yellow, the Sandaime Hokage could not help the sense of dread festering in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

_Death is odd_, Minato thought absentmindedly. Given the varying descriptions of what death was actually like, he wasn't quite sure what to expect. Some said it was like falling and landing in something supremely soft, while others said it was just a sudden rush of heat followed by deathly cold. Others said it was like the embrace of a lover after an exhausting day, and some said it was just a consuming feeling of nothingness. In other words, he really didn't have a clue of what it was going to be like. There were just too many differing accounts, too many unknowns to truly understand what death was like.

But he had a pretty grasp of the concept now.

He coughed up a little blood he couldn't quite taste as he readjusted his failing body slightly, the massive claw of the struggling Kyuubi digging through his torso, and through Kushina's. He kept a gentle, loving grip on his wife's sides as tears made their way down her beautiful face and soft sobs escaped her mouth for what was undoubtedly the last time.

She cried for their newborn son, for Naruto. On the day that they brought a new life into the world, life was taken away. She cried for Naruto, and Minato cried for their son and for the village.

While his son was the most important thing in his fading mind, the village and its people had a place in his worries all the same. He was the Yondaime Hokage. He cared for his people, for his village, like they were family, and many members of his family died when the Kyuubi attacked the village. He had stopped its incensed rampage, but even the loss of a single life, a single injury, was too grave a price to pay.

Tears made their way down his face in silence as he held an internal memorial for those lost on the night of Naruto's birth. Silently, he composed a speech he would've given to the grieving if he had had the chance to survive with his wife and son.

_Friends, families, we are gathered here on this day to commemorate the lives of those who fell in the Kyuubi no Youko's unprovoked attack on the village_, he began. _The cost of that night was high, and it was a price that should not have been paid. So many friends were lost in a conflict that never should have occurred, and so many families were torn apart by the loss of so many proud shinobi and upstanding civilians of this village in a single night._

He paused for a moment to let his words sink into an imagined crowd of tearful men and women, even children. _For those stricken with grief, all of Konoha grieves with you. For those who have lost a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, all of Konoha knows your pain. For those who have had their homes destroyed and their land flattened, all of Konoha feels your burden. But, while we take time to mourn all that we have lost and grieve for the fallen, take solace in how they fell: they fell so we could live._

After another sinking pause, he continued. _All of them, every single one of those fine men and women, gave their lives in the hopes that we might continue living, and that we would live to see the morning they could not share with us. Not only did they sacrifice themselves to protect the village and everyone in it, but they died with hope in their hearts, a hope that could not be extinguished by their deaths. All of their hopes and dreams still live on in us, and they live on the Will of Fire they cherished so deeply._

He paused again, and an appreciative collective gasp of realisation from the crowd reached his ears. _Today, our Wills of Fire may be dampened. They may be dwindling for some. They may be all but snuffed out for those who have lost so much. But, people of Konohagakure no Sato, our Fire cannot be dampened, it cannot be dwindling and it cannot be snuffed out. Our Fire cannot be any of those things, because our Will of Fire still burns. As long it burns, it will never be dim and dying. As long as it burns, it will never be dwindling or fading. As long as it burns, it will never be snuffed out._

_Friends and families,_ Minato announced once more to the crowd, _the Will of Fire is fuelled by hope. As long as there is hope, even the tiniest ember of hope that drifts on the winds of ever-mounting change, there will be a Fire that burns. And it burns in _us_._

Minato's silent tears turned to the tiniest of laughs. He always did enjoy the chance for some semi-decent oration.

"Giving an internal monologue again, Minato-kun?" His wife knew him so well, even at the end.

He couldn't help but give a pained smile. "You know me too well, my love."

"I've had my turn now, Minato-kun," Kushina whispered to him. "Tell your son what you want him to hear."

He looked at the little bundle of joy below him, the pudgy, little bundle with a little bit of blond hair like his that threatened to burst into tears at any moment as he gazed upon the world with bright blue eyes. He didn't want to see his wonderful son, less than a day old, cry like the world was ending. How he wished he could hold his little boy and whisper reassuring words to him as a father should. How he wished he could see his little boy grow up into a man. How he wished he could give his son words of fatherly advice when he needed it most. How he wished he could do all of those things a father and son got to do together. How he wished things could've been different.

"There's not much to say that your mother hasn't already, Naruto," he said quietly. "Grow up safe. Be strong. Believe in yourself and in the Will of Fire."

Tears threatened to reappear at his next words. "I'm sorry, son. I'm so, so sorry. I failed you so quickly, because I had to go and sacrifice the life me and your mother could've given you, all for the village's sake. Please forgive me for putting them ahead of you, and for forcing such a heavy burden on you."

There was one more thing he needed to tell him. "You can do it, Naruto. You can carry this burden. I believe in you. We believe in you. One day, the whole village... no, the whole world will believe in you. You can change this. All of this."

He finally let the tears fall freely as he imparted the last parts of his and Kushina's chakra to the seal on Naruto's belly, and the unsealed half of the Kyuubi was absorbed into the seal as the summoned Shinigami did what it was called for.

He felt the talon in his belly disappear, and he and his beautiful wife collapsed to the ground in front of their crying child. It was nearly over.

"Hush, Naruto," he whispered. "It will be alright."

His son's heartbreaking bawling became a quiet, sad sob.

"You won't always be alone, Naruto. One day, you'll find someone like you. He'll be a good friend, someone who understands the burden you carry, because he has one just like yours," Kushina soothed their son.

Minato smiled a little. His Kushina always was surprising. He hadn't told her about the jinchuuriki child he had received that morning, nor had he divulged his plans to adopt him and raise him as their own. And yet Kushina somehow knew. One of the mysteries of life, he supposed.

But that would have to wait. Death was taking him now.

As hands of darkness grasped him gently, and he felt Kushina slip away from his touch, he realised that death was cold, but somewhat reassuring. Even in death, there was still hope out there. Somewhere.

_Naruto, Koan... please, live well._

His hope went with them.

* * *

_What I said up at the start applies here, too._

_See the next chapter for more things._

_A238_


	2. 1: Games

_This is a redone version of the first chapter of Magma through Leaves. When I say redone, I mean more of a complete overhaul of this chapter and the story as a whole. The first version sucked, plain and simple. I hope this one doesn't. And away we go._

* * *

Chapter 1: Games

* * *

Konohagakure no Sato was built in a land of forests. Hi no Kuni was a green, vibrant nation, teeming with life and flora and fauna of all sorts and species. He found it odd, given the name of the country.

In his experience, fire burnt. He was sure many others would say the same. Fire burnt, and it did not build. It did not create. It did not sustain. It did not give life. No foundation could be found in fire. Yet Konohagakure no Sato prided itself on its Will of Fire, the spirit handed down from the Senju clan to the people to love the village with everything and defend it with the same strength of emotion, the same power of feeling. It was more contradictions that somehow made sense. In Konoha, everything was built on a foundation of fire, but the forest it lived in didn't burn.

_Odd, indeed._

Konoha existed in a place of trees and forest, so he had to adapt to it. The shinobi of Konoha knew their terrain. They knew how to navigate it, how to manipulate it, how to use it to their advantage. It was only natural that those who lived among trees understood them best. Chief among those understandings of trees and forests was the ability to hide in them.

Stealth wasn't his forte. He doubted it ever would be, but it was a necessary skill. They all learned it, and they would all use it at one point or another. Not every encounter was direct, not every unfavourable situation was remedied with straightforward action. Some required a more artful approach, a silent, unseen one. This was one of those times. It was perhaps unusual, considering he was only a few hours out of the Academy, but he put that in the back of his mind. He needed to be here. _But why?_

He wondered what he, a fresh genin clad in grey and black and concealed in the gloom of the trees surrounding the clearing he watched over, was doing here. But then he reminded himself: he needed to be sure of something.

It was the chance of finding an answer to a question he asked himself frequently: _am I alone?_ Some time ago, that question had replaced another one: _why am I alone?_

The context was different back in those days, a lot lonelier than he was in the present, but it had been answered by a strange series of events he preferred to never discuss. With his question rendered null and void by a decree of the world itself, he began asking something else of himself. Arguably, he had been content to continue asking that newer question, but when a sliver of hope that there was another just like him presented itself, he grabbed at it, regardless of what he was letting go of in pursuit of it. In that, he realised that his contentment wasn't quite what it seemed. In the end, he still felt hollow, alone, but he saw a way to change that. If what he suspected was true, he wasn't alone.

He almost smiled.

He frowned at the unneeded pulling of his facial muscles and shook his head free of thoughts, clutching a hand at his forehead only to be stopped by his hitai-ate. He was still unaccustomed to the presence of the metal band on blue cloth he needed to change to black resting on his brow, and old habits did not fade quickly. But it was unimportant. He had to focus.

There was movement beyond the single person crouched and studying a large scroll in the middle of the clearing, situated outside an old shack. Someone was approaching from the south-east at speed through the temperate branches, faster than the typical genin could hope to manage.

There were two possibilities as to the identity of the approaching individual: Iruka, or Mizuki. The latter was doubtlessly going to show up sooner or later, but the former was likely to arrive given the perpetrator of the offence, not to mention the sort-of history between the boy in orange and the chuunin instructor in the green flak jacket with the red swirl that no one seemed to take note of.

It was Iruka who arrived first. He could see concern on the chuunin's face – genuine concern. It wasn't something he saw directed towards those like him often. But concern was soon replaced by alarm as Iruka pushed Naruto away, allowing himself to be robbed of the opportunity to dodge. Kunai flew around him, natural reactions and instinct took over, but one kunai reached his thigh. Iruka staggered back. Blood trailed down the wooden wall of the old shack.

Mizuki dropped into view, landing in the branches on the other side of the clearing. And he began to speak. Words were exchanged, flying back between the two chuunin like angry shuriken. Mizuki showed his hand before it should've been revealed.

_So... I was right_.

Brushing a strand of dark hair from the slightly reflective surface of his forehead protector, he readied himself. Though his question had been answered, he had a duty to fulfil: protect his fellow jinchuuriki. And that moment of responsibility was upon him.

Koan recalled the words of his bijuu as he plunged into the clearing, slamming metallic night aside with a clenched fist blazing with chakra.

_Brotherhood is not defined by the number, but by the tail._

* * *

As he sat there on the rickety swing outside and watched the others, an arm supporting his slumped head on the thin rope and the other left to dangle aimlessly by his side, he remembered something: he never wanted to be a ninja.

When he was very young, he had a dream of wandering the world, helping the people he encountered however he could. He wanted to do some good in the lands he travelled. He wanted to drift from place to place, following the wind as it guided him across the length and breadth of the world. He wanted to take life at his own pace, and to walk his own path. He wanted to be free.

As much as wanted that, it wasn't an option.

He never knew why, but his life seemed... predetermined, to an extent. The path he had been set on wasn't the one he chose; someone else had already chosen it for him. But yet again, that wasn't entirely accurate. It was more that he didn't have any other options. There was only one path he could walk: a ninja's path.

It was because of who he was he supposed. An orphan never to be adopted was left with fewer and fewer prospects for a prosperous life as they grew, and he was no exception. Eventually, he was forced to make a choice: stay in the orphanage, or start attending the Academy. The choice was clear, but he didn't like it.

There were benefits to it, at first. He liked having a place to call his own, no matter how modest and rundown his apartment was. He liked being able to have a little quiet and be on his own; he never had real peace in the orphanage, especially when the carers decided they had run out of breakfast or lunch on some days, just when it was his turn to be served. He liked learning something, anything; there was only so much he could learn by watching life go on around him, gazing upon a sea of nameless faces that didn't see or acknowledge him at a distance, and seeing the cold, dispassionate glances towards him when the older people passed him by on the street. The only other benefit of note was the small sum of money he had to his name each month, the part of his stipend that didn't pay for his apartment.

Slowly, he became... less averse to the idea of being a ninja.

But as he got older, he saw more and he understood more. Those benefits weren't quite as great as he had first thought.

His apartment, despite how badly the walls needed a coat of paint and how irritating a leaky ceiling could be during rain, was perfectly liveable. He liked it. But the things he had inside eventually started to break. Furniture got old and worn, appliances stopped working, pipes got clogged and wires got frayed. He couldn't repair much because he didn't know how to. He couldn't buy things right when he needed them because he didn't have that much money. He just had to grit his teeth and bear it. He could do that.

Initially, the solitude wasn't so bad. He had quiet when he wanted it, and he didn't have to deal with people that offered him fake smiles and secretive glances of distaste and disgust in the place he slept. But it got lonely. He didn't have anyone to talk to. He noticed that more and more. Even at the Academy, the kids tended not to go near him much, same as a lot of the adults on the streets. He was alone a lot, too much in reality. There were rare moments when he got to spend some time with the others after classes, at playgrounds and the like, but they always came to a swift end when the parents would come and haul them away, leaving him alone with their hurried looks of revolt and distrust.

As he got older, he saw those looks constantly, from a lot of people. But it was worse when they ignored him like he wasn't even there. He hated it. So he made them look at him. Pranks started to fill up his life, taking up space in his mind and the cupboards in his apartment, odd supplies and orange tracksuits alike. He drew attention with graffiti, with vandalism, with the occasional stolen piece of fruit. Then he threw on a cheeky grin and ran away as fast as he could. They couldn't ignore him then.

He did the same at the Academy. He let his grades, sitting just below average, slide, and became the class clown, the centre of attention to be laughed at. While he learned less at the Academy because he focused intently on drawing attention to himself, that wasn't the only reason. He was never particularly good at the theory and the written stuff, but he noticed that the difficulty on what he got graded on spiked suddenly at times. After a bit of careful observation, he realised his tests were different to his classmates. They were setting him up to fail. Again, he saw those looks of hate and detached disgust, even if they weren't on the faces of the people passing him by.

When he was younger, he would've recoiled, shrinking back into himself to hide. But he was determined to prove them wrong. Despite his own beliefs and dreams, he was going to be a ninja, and he was going to be the best ninja: the Hokage. He was going to become Hokage just to prove them wrong. That was his new dream.

The first step was getting out of the Academy.

So he threw himself into training, trying to do his best to succeed, to conquer whatever challenges life sent hurtling his way. He spent countless hours on the Henge and Kawarimi, cycling through the hand seals over and over again until he could perform them with some semblance of ease. After a while, he achieved his goal.

He tried to strengthen his taijutsu however he could, but it wasn't easy. What he had been taught was awkward, useless and ultimately pointless. In other words, they were just setting him up for another failure. So he abandoned trying to fix it through the basic Academy scrolls – he had never really found much use for those things, anyway – and adopted simple, haphazard brawling. It was chaotic and messy, but through sheer effort, he made it work.

He went to great lengths trying to overcome the biased tests and work set for him by the Academy's chuunin instructors, doing his best to revise and study the content, struggling to make sense of everything on his own. With no real source of knowledge other than his own mind – he wished he could access the library, but the staff kept getting in his way at every turn –, he had to make do with little more than half of what he needed to know.

He put in so much time and so much effort in getting his shit together for the last test. But it was all immaterial now, all useless.

He failed. For the third time in a row, he failed the genin test.

All his work amounted to nothing, all because of the Bunshin no Jutsu, the one useless clone technique he just couldn't pull off no matter how much chakra he shoved into it. Right when he needed it to work, the clone just appeared like a pathetic, pale ghost of himself, tumbled to the ground and then disappeared in a pitiful cloud of smoke.

He looked away from the crowd of congratulating parents and excited new shinobi, training his eyes on the ground and watching leaves caught up in the gentle wind float into the sky. Unlike him, the leaves were free.

He chuckled to himself at the irony. He was trying to become a shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Leaves, yet he was firmly tied down to a path he didn't want to walk. Despite the relaxed, unrestricted namesake and attitude of his village, he didn't feel free in the slightest.

_So what now?_

He remained on the swing, eyes on the dusty ground, heart desiring freedom, mind working tiredly. He wasn't sure on what was next.

He still had dreams. There were wants and desires he could pursue. But all that pegged on his becoming a shinobi, on graduating and getting on a team and taking the first steps on the road to becoming Hokage. Without that, they just fell into disarray. Without that, his hopes and dreams were worthless.

Maybe... no, he couldn't leave. He couldn't just run away from his problems. Despite everything, Konoha was still his home. He was born in the village, and so he would remain in the village. It wasn't like there was a whole world out there, waiting for him to walk out into nature and explore, sitting quietly in whistling winds as he languished aimlessly in the village that stopped him-

_Damn it, just stop!_ He kept slipping into that weak state of mind, the mentality that accepted defeat and ran away into the distance, never looking back as he fled into the forest, leapt through the trees, scaled mountains and swam oceans, breathing free air all the while.

It sounded glorious to him, a boy trapped in a village of shinobi walking paths he didn't want to take. But it was so cowardly. He wanted that ability to choose his own path and follow the wind where it went, and he wanted it more than he wanted respect and positive attention and friends, but he wanted it the right way.

And that way was the way of the ninja, the only path that had ever been put before him. More than just his route to acceptance and the title of Hokage, it was his ticket to freedom.

He just didn't know how to get it.

"Hey, Naruto."

The boy in question spared a glance upwards to see a white-haired man in typical Konoha shinobi garb – navy blue shirt and pants, sandals, green flak jacket and hitai-ate – standing nearby, hands in his pockets, an understanding smile on his face.

"Hey, Mizuki-sensei."

* * *

For the better part of a hundred years, Konoha's ANBU forces had been running black ops across the continent in the name of defending the village from the shadows. They undertook the missions no one else could, in the deafening silence that no one else could withstand. They operated under the cover of night, living and breathing darkness, day in and day out. They were chosen, no matter their age, gender, past, heritage or rank, to act as the Hokage's right hand.

They were the ANBU. They were the elite, and they stood ever vigilant in the darkness.

The ANBU way of life was what Uzuki Yugao had known for more than half her life. The twenty-four hour state of readiness, the willingness to do what was needed no matter how dire the circumstances were, and the missions that took her and her squad deep into the underbelly of the shinobi world time and time again were all things she was used to. What she still wasn't used to, even after five years, was the occasional in-village police assignment.

That dreadful night that took away the Uchiha clan from Konoha left the ANBU in an odd position.

For the longest time, their role was to look outward onto the world and safeguard the village from external threats. They were the vanguard, the first and last line of defence against threats to the village and masters of the pre-emptive strike. Torture and assassination were all a part of the dirty business that kept their village safe. And yet that night had seen them almost immediately straddled with day-to-day internal affairs.

The Konoha Military Police Force, run almost exclusively by the Uchiha clan, had collapsed. The chief of police, Uchiha Fugaku, was dead. Manpower had been reduced to a mere ten percent of its original self. The organisation was on its last legs from the events of a single night.

The police force was needed to keep order in the village and handle its basic judicial needs. Without it, a rise in crime was a certainty. Konoha was a friendly place to live in an increasingly unfriendly world, but even it was not above crime and wrongdoing. So it was left to a handful of ANBU squads on rotation to pick up the slack and handle civilian law and order.

The change had been tough at first. They weren't dealing with enemy shinobi, spying on foreign military operations or tracking missing-nin in hostile territory. They were handling public drunkenness, hauling people to lockup on assault charges, sorting out domestic disputes and on the lookout for petty thievery. The shift to such rudimentary police work wasn't a clean one either.

A number of incidents involving excessive use of force against civilians had quickly occurred, but no action was taken against the agents concerned. These were men and women used to dealing with high-level shinobi, extremely dangerous people. They lived in a world with no room for restraint, and their honed senses of immediacy and danger did not fade with the introduction of such mundane, ordinary tasks into their duties so easily. When they were taken away from their typical environment, some behaviours would carry over, no matter how disciplined the ANBU were.

As time went by, their village-bound duties diminished. The Konoha Military Police were brought back up to strength over a number of years and they resumed their traditional function. The ANBU squads assigned to the task of policing dropped away and returned to work as usual. Most things went back to the way they were.

But every now and again, there was something that turned up in the village itself that the police couldn't handle. When something dangerous enough, or information sensitive enough, appeared, the ANBU were called in to take care of it once again.

These assignments were not common. There were few things the police force could not deal with in the village – they were shinobi, after all – but matters of security were not to be taken lightly.

Taking security concerns lightly or not, Yugao still wasn't particularly fond of operations within the village's boundaries, especially ones delegated from the police to her squad.

It was only one or two months out of the year that she and her team were assigned to in-village issues, and it had nearly always been fairly quiet. For a team of highly trained, battle-hardened veterans used to high-stress, high-adrenaline situations, it was something of an additional vacation to their customary time off, just light patrols and the occasional spot of surveillance. She had been expecting a bit of a break from the usual routine.

What she had not been expecting was to be assigned with the shadowing and reporting on an Academy instructor. At first, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary other than the target. The work itself was straightforward observation at a reasonable distance. Any agent with the slightest bit of experience could do it in their sleep. It was the target himself that garnered her particular attention.

Toji Mizuki was not an especially noticeable man. He was a chuunin instructor at the Academy. According to his recent files, he was an average teacher, neither remarkably astute nor unintelligent, nor was he heavily liked or heavily disliked. Delving a little farther back into his past, he was a somewhat noted shinobi. He had made some evident accomplishments on his genin team in his early days, promoted along with his teammate and fellow instructor, Umino Iruka, during their very first Chuunin Exams. After a botched mission and the loss of his other teammate, however, he had quickly faded into the comfortable obscurity of the chuunin rank and assumed a teaching position at the Academy with his old teammate.

It was a common story among those of that rank. After suffering emotional trauma with the loss of friends or teammates, or surviving serious injuries, many shinobi found themselves unable or unwilling to continue with an active career in the field. As such, many assumed administration roles in the Hokage's offices, started private businesses, took up teaching at the Academy or simply retired and remained on call for the reserves in case the drums of war started beating a little too close to home.

Mizuki's tale was not an especially notable one, and by all accounts, it made him the very definition of _typical_. He was mid-rank, mid-skilled, mid-everything. Even his psychological profile marked him with a very stock-standard shinobi mentality.

To the average person, nothing would seem amiss. Yugao was a member of the ANBU for a reason, however, and there was also a reason Mizuki was under surveillance. She just didn't know what it was.

This kind of reconnaissance was not new territory for her. She had been doing this kind of work for years. But she had been doing it outside the village. Her current assignment was in the domain typically occupied by the shinobi of the police force, the ninja who dealt with the lower levels of village security and maintained law and order. The only reason she and her squad could have been assigned was if something larger was at work. And apparently, that larger something was on a strictly need-to-know basis.

She was ANBU, and she knew the pecking order. Even in the uppermost echelons of Konoha's most elite military organisation, there was still someone above her: the Hokage. The man in the hat did not disclose the reasons _why_ he handed her team the assignment, and she did not ask.

She was used to it, had been dealing with the concept of limited intel and a lack of the big picture since day one. Yet this rubbed her the wrong way. Something was just odd about it all. The information she and her squad was supposed to keep track of – his comings and goings in the village, the people he talked to or socialised with on a regular basis, his usual routine at work and taking note of any changes in it– were all things they did to high-value or high-risk targets out in the field. They didn't do this sort of stuff to chuunin instructors working long, tedious hours in the Academy, doing their best to try and give the next generation of the village's defenders a fighting chance in a world that outright refused to give them one. It all felt wrong.

The worst part was that nothing was coming from it. For the past month, each daily report she submitted told the same story: _behaviour normal, routine unchanged, nothing of note to report. _It was why she never liked in-village operations. Her time handling policing duties after the Uchiha Massacre had drilled that into her. Nothing ever came of it.

It was just a waste of time.

She had felt that way right until the day of the Genin Exams. They were held every six months, both as voluntary tests Academy students could take to try and get into the genin teams early, and as the final graduation exam of a class. The class Mizuki and his colleague Iruka were teaching – a class full of clan heirs – was taking the exam.

It ended the same way it always did: some passed and some failed. It was nothing notable. But then the member of her squad on watch, Tori, noticed something when the graduated kids started to mingle with their parents or siblings waiting outside for the news: Mizuki started talking to Uzumaki Naruto.

The assignment no longer had anything to do with observing Mizuki's behaviour for anything unusual.

According to Tori's report, Mizuki had tricked the jinchuuriki into making an attempt to steal the Scroll of Sealing from the Hokage's mansion. She informed the Hokage immediately. The man in the hat told her to keep tracking Mizuki and bring him in when the opportunity arose.

That odd command brought her and her team to a clearing in some of the extended forest that sheltered the village's many training grounds under the cover of night turning into morning. It was a vast expanse of land, and not all of it lay behind the safety of Konoha's high walls and protective barriers. But it was the location that Mizuki had told the jinchuuriki to meet him in to hand over the scroll after he had learnt something from it.

And yet they were not here.

"Tori," Yugao whispered into the short-range radio behind her mask, "are you sure this is the right location?"

"Positive, Neko-taichou," the ANBU newbie in the bird mask responded briskly, bringing up the map of the area to eye-level. "I'm absolutely sure this is... oh, no."

Yugao held back a curse. "What is it?"

"... the map was upside down."

Of all the mistakes an ANBU operative could make in the middle of a high-priority mission, that one was the absolute _fucking worst_.

Yugao shook her head and snatched the map from his grasp to check it herself. That was the last time she let bird boy handle navigation. "Whatever. We're there five minutes ago. Move."

The ANBU squad leapt into the shadows.

* * *

_This is not going to be easy,_ Naruto thought with a frown, scratching at his chin as he pored over the jutsu on the scroll he had retrieved from the Hokage's mansion. He had snuck by the guards with the use of every stealthy trick in his bag of sly manoeuvres, made his way into the room where it was supposed to be, found no one inside and made off with the scroll intact and in tow.

It hadn't been particularly easy, but he made it out unseen. The next step was a bit harder.

The jutsu was a clone technique. That set off alarms in his head the moment he read it. The Bunshin no Jutsu was his own personal tormentor, and he couldn't imagine any other techniques like it being simple to learn or use. But then there was the mention of the word _solid_.

Solid clones. That was a world away from the flimsy illusions he had tried to create for hours and hours on end. These almost seemed... useful. Solid copies that could interact with the environment around him opened up entire realms of opportunity for combat, misdirection, navigation, sabotage, stealth, and a bunch of other things he couldn't think of in a single moment.

This was something he just _had_ to learn.

Naruto shot to his feet, made the depicted hand seal with some chakra behind it and said the words, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" (Shadow Clone Technique)

A puff of smoke later... nothing much happened.

Naruto scratched his head. _Nothing? Really? I would've thought I'd gotten something out of that._

He looked back to the scroll. It said something about splitting chakra evenly between clones, so did he have to shove half of his chakra into his hands to actually make something come out of it?

"Eh, nothing to lose, I suppose," Naruto shrugged to himself.

Bringing his hands up into the seal again, Naruto forced a boatload of chakra into his hands, enough to make them glow with vivid blue light, and pushed it outwards, words and all. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

He felt a strange rush of motion travel along his skin as chakra shot out, making a larger puff of smoke than before. And something came out of it this time.

It was a pale, pathetic thing, similar to the reedy and sickly looking copy of him that always puffed out in a heap on the ground whenever he attempted the Bunshin no Jutsu. But it was standing. The clothing looked washed out by white and grey, the features and hair were all a little bit off and ailing in colour, but it was standing, looking around, breathing in and out a little too heavily. It was almost... alive.

Then it looked at him, drooping eyes wide and toothless mouth hanging open. It was practically gaping at him, struggling to comprehend something before it disappeared in a dismal puff of chakra-laden smoke.

Naruto frowned. "That was weird."

He tried again with the same method. He felt the charge of energy ripple along his skin and another puff of smoke issued out of nothingness.

The clone had some colour this time. Its hair was blond; its jumpsuit was orange like his, and its eyes were blue. But it was tired, sleepy to the point where it could barely stand. It teetered back and forth on malnourished legs, failing to cover a yawn with a bony hand before it gave him a little wave and puffed itself away and out of reality.

Something was off. Maybe it was the amount of chakra he was pumping into it. _Do I need to put more into it or something?_

He considered it for a second before tossing that idea out the mental window. Chakra wasn't something he could just toss around like that. Firsthand experience with brute-forcing chakra into a technique had taught him that it didn't do much in the way of good. The first time he tried using the Kawarimi, he knocked himself out for a few minutes when he smacked headfirst into a tree at high speed when he pumped chakra into the jutsu without a second thought. That hadn't been a very good day.

He had asked Iruka-sensei about how to try and fix that with his ninjutsu, and the response he had gotten was something along the lines of jutsu requiring an amount of chakra specific to each. But this was different. This was a high-level technique – a B-ranked one, if the scroll could be trusted. Without a doubt, it needed a lot of chakra to work.

"Worth a shot," Naruto muttered.

He made a Ram seal and focused.

It was what he found comfortable when he needed to concentrate his chakra. It was probably not a good habit to have, especially if he ever wanted to use big or powerful jutsu in the middle of a fight that needed a lot of energy to work properly. It made things predictable. But this wasn't a fight. This was him, learning alone in a forest to try and work his way around the system with the help of a sensei kind enough to give him a chance. Maybe it wouldn't work, but he wouldn't know unless he tried.

Chakra encircled him in lines and waves of brilliant blue. The Ram became the cross for the clone. He breathed in, and then out. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

A cloud of smoke exploded out into the clearing, and Naruto felt a little out of breath. But it was worth it, he realised, when the chakra-made smoke drifted out into the trees and faded into the background. He was staring himself right in the face.

"Well, that's weird."

Did... that clone just talk?

It looked around, scratched its chin, stretched its arms, and then sat on the ground to resume looking at him.

"Do you have any ramen on you? I'm starving," the copy moaned.

Naruto just stared.

"No ramen?" it asked. "Oh, well. I don't even think I need to eat anyway."

He couldn't help but ask. "Why's that?"

"I'm just a clone," it shrugged. "Just chakra in a different shape than normal and all that."

He narrowed his eyes a little. "Are you real?"

The clone looked at him incredulously. "What kind of a question is that? Of course I'm real. You're talking to me right now, Boss. I'm talking and breathing, or whatever passes for breathing considering I'm made out of your chakra."

"It's kind of a weird thing talking to myself, though," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I know the feeling," the clone nodded.

The clearing slipped into an uncomfortable silence.

"Um..." Naruto began, "how do I... you know... make you... uh..."

The clone made an 'o' with its mouth after a few seconds of watching him stumble through his sentence. "Oh, you mean how to dispel me?"

"Yeah," Naruto mumbled awkwardly, "that."

The clone shook its head in something akin to disappointment. "I'm made of your chakra. All you have to do is think about pulling the chakra I'm made of back in with the rest of it."

He wrinkled his forehead in concentration. "So... like this?"

His answer was a weird noise and puff of smoke.

"Huh," he mumbled again.

That... was a weird feeling. Maybe he needed more practice. Good thing he still had another hour until Mizuki-sensei was going to meet him. That gave him plenty of time to get familiar with the technique.

He smiled broadly. Even though this wasn't his first choice of lifestyle, at least he actually had a chance at it now.

* * *

A fierce pounding on his front door woke him far too early, but it was the shouts of a familiar voice to hurry up and answer the door that made him rush to his feet and to the small entrance of his apartment. Flicking on a light, Iruka pulled his door open to see his friend and colleague fully dressed in flak jacket and combat gear.

"What's wrong, Mizuki?" Iruka asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Naruto's stolen the Scroll of Sealing!" Mizuki almost exploded, information splattering Iruka in the face along with a little bit of spit.

He was definitely awake now. "What happened?"

"How the hell should I know?" Mizuki held his palms up. "I need to go raise the alarm. You should gear up and try and find Naruto."

Iruka flew back inside, grabbing the pouches by his bed and the flak jacket on a hanger in his cupboard in a flurry of motion. This was not good. A jinchuuriki with a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips and a chance to leave the village with it was a recipe for absolute disaster. And if he left, and another village got a hold of him, or the scroll, or both... he didn't even want to think about that.

He dressed, affixed his holster and pouches, slammed the door shut and took off in one direction while Mizuki took off in another.

It was time to put his skill in tracking Naruto to work.

* * *

Naruto sat back down between the thick roots of a gnarled tree, smiling to himself and breathing a little on the heavy side. He was making progress with his favourite new toy – well, it wasn't really a toy, but the way he could just play around with it at will certainly made it feel like one.

_Toys, huh?_ Naruto thought. A little bit of nostalgia crawled to his mind's surface.

It had been a stinking hot day. Sweat was always uncomfortable, especially when it made the scratchy material of his t-shirt stick to his skin and shift slightly every time he moved. He had found some relief in the bowl of lukewarm rice he had gotten for breakfast, but the rest of the day was filled with rumbling hunger and stifling humidity. Nothing about the day was particularly memorable. The night was a different story.

When the lights had been turned off in the tiny room he slept in on his lonesome, he had sat up on his thin mattress and stared out the small window at the night sky. He couldn't remember how long he spent looking at the moon, feeling oddly pensive, but when darkness flickered behind him, he turned to see something on his pillow: a little stuffed toy.

It was a small brown dog with small eyes and a blue hitai-ate – a ninken. And he loved it on sight. It was the only toy he ever had, and he still had it. It sat by his bed, watching out for him while he slept. He had no idea who gave it to him, but it meant that someone cared, even a little.

It gave him just a bit of hope, enough to keep going. And it kept him going for a long time, long enough to take the road he didn't want to and come out on top. It was just a matter of time before-

"Naruto!"

A shape flashed out of the darkness, and Iruka-sensei stood over him. "What do you think you're doing with that?"

His teacher pointed sharply to the scroll by his side.

"Oh, that," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I only managed to squeeze one technique out of it before you found me. But I can graduate now, right? I can show you the jutsu if you want to see it. Damn, it's a nice one! It's freaking-"

"Naruto, stop babbling," Iruka-sensei interrupted. "Who told you to take that scroll?"

Naruto frowned. Something was wrong. He thought Iruka-sensei would be in on his arrangement with Mizuki-sensei as well.

"Mizuki-sensei told me to," he said, standing up and slinging the thick scroll over his back by the strap attached to it.

"Mizuki?" Iruka-sensei looked just as shocked as his voice sounded.

Naruto frowned again. Something was definitely-

Iruka pushed him to the ground.

"Hey, what-"

The sound that filled the air was familiar. Training grounds were filled with it during the day. The Academy was sometimes filled with it just the same. He was used to it. He had made it himself. It was the sound of metal stabbing into wood, kunai or shuriken lancing into target dummies or trees as they left the hands of the practicing.

He looked to his right.

Iruka-sensei was pinned to the old wooden shack by kunai, metal puncturing his clothing and his right thigh. With a grunt, the chuunin pulled the kunai free from his leg, a heavy wince never leaving his face. A bloody kunai fell to the grass and the dirt.

"Naruto, give me the scroll."

He looked up. Mizuki-sensei was standing in the branches above, arms by his sides and something large and metal on his back resembling a shuriken.

Naruto's grip on the scroll's strap tightened.

"Don't give it to him, Naruto."

Iruka's voice cut through the night, strong and unshaken.

Mizuki's eyes turned to Iruka, and then he himself winced slightly.

"Sorry about the leg, Iruka," he said... casually? "I guess my aim was a little off. I was just trying to keep you from moving."

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing, Mizuki?" Iruka practically spat.

"Something they should've done a long time ago," Mizuki answered quickly.

Iruka's eyes widened, but narrowed just as quickly. "No. I'm not going to let you."

Mizuki stared at him. "Come on, Iruka. We can gut this little shit and ditch this dump of a hidden village for some place that'll actually appreciate our talents."

Iruka stared right back, eyes unchanging. "Are you out of your mind, Mizuki? You actually think I'd willingly kill Naruto and desert Konoha? And for what? I'm happy here, and I thought you were as well!"

"We've been chuunin for how long? The better part of ten years? And we've spent six of those teaching kids! We're shinobi, and they want us to teach? It's a fucking waste!"

Some kind of realisation dawned on Iruka's face. "Is that what this is all about? Just our ranks? Our jobs? If that's true, you're even more insane than I thought."

"No. It's about that... _thing_ as well!" Mizuki spat, jabbing a finger towards Naruto. "They should've killed it at the first chance they got. It was why the Yondaime Hokage died, so we could wipe that _demon_ off the face of the planet once and for all!"

Iruka stood up from his lean against the shack's wall, wincing sharply and gripping a hand to his leg. "You're not touching Naruto, Mizuki!"

"What about your parents, Iruka? You think they'd be happy to see you defending the monster that killed them and so many others in a single night from justice?"

Iruka's face hardened further. "My parents would never have wanted an innocent child _murdered_ in the name of whatever the hell you think is justice."

"Innocent?" Mizuki almost laughed. "Stop trying to fool yourself, Iruka. There's not a damn thing innocent about the container of the demon that killed your parents, the Yondaime, hundreds of civilians and shinobi, and my sister, in a _single_ _night_. It's been thirteen years since then, and the village still isn't fully recovered. And it's all because of that _fucking fox_!"

"Naruto isn't the fox! He wasn't the one who killed Reiko!"

"Stop denying it and let me kill that thing, Iruka," Mizuki snarled.

"You're the one in denial, Mizuki," Iruka said, suddenly quiet. "If you think that murdering an innocent child is going to bring back your sister and erase everything that happened that night, then you're dead wrong."

Mizuki's face of anger and rage faded, disappearing into something similar to resignation. He looked down.

"Dead, huh?" he muttered almost inaudibly. "Yeah."

He looked back up.

"It's not going to change anything, Iruka," Mizuki said with the same sad and silent tone as Iruka, reaching for the massive shuriken on his back. "It'll just make it easier to live with."

His eyes turned to Naruto, and his mouth contorted into a nasty grin.

Naruto's mind was racing. _What the fuck is going on?_

His grin turned into a growl. "Goodbye... Kyuubi."

He took hold of the massive shuriken gently, cocking his arm back slowly and deliberately. All Naruto could do was watch, his mind flooded by... whatever had just been said. Images other than imminent death came into view, of giant monsters with flowing tails and strange red chakra, and of an old man in a white hat shouting commands he couldn't hear... and of two people he couldn't distinguish looking down at him with... pained joy.

Then the shuriken overtook it all.

He heard movement from above and below. Grunting. Steel on steel. Effort. Metal through wood.

Naruto blinked. He wasn't dead. He still saw forest. And people. Iruka-sensei was in front of him, paused mid-motion, looking like he was about to lunge forward to try and stop something. Mizuki was in the branches above, arm frozen in the position to release and receive.

And someone... unfamiliar between them.

On a branch lower than Mizuki's and in a different tree across the clearing, next to a path of shredded wood and desecrated leaves, a dark-haired boy with darkish skin in black crouched, one hand on the tree, his murky eyes dark.

He dropped to the grass in a smooth motion. Naruto caught a hint of grey-silver and blue on his forehead – a brand new hitai-ate. He was a genin, just like he wanted to be. And he had a feeling he knew him from somewhere...

"Wait... Koan?"

The name brought to mind another word: _classmate_.

Iruka's surprised tone made the new entry's eyes quirk in a glance towards him before flickering upwards to Mizuki.

"What do you think you're doing, kid?" Mizuki asked between clenched teeth.

"Stopping you," he said simply, like a fact. The voice that spoke was strong, firm, deep. It belied age.

Dark brown eyes marked with flecks of yellow shifted to Naruto's own. "It's the least I can do for someone like me."

With that, he moved. Naruto almost missed it.

A dark blur sped into the air. Mizuki dodged into the trees. The thick branch he stood on cleaved from the tree in a splash of bark and splinters. The dark blur reformed on the trunk, the genin somehow crouched on the vertical surface.

Koan looked back towards the clearing. "I'll handle this."

He disappeared into the trees.

* * *

_Shit, he's getting away!_

Koan redoubled his movement, bounding from branch to branch and zigzagging his way through the wooded space between the ground and the canopy. But Mizuki was still ahead of him.

He was at a disadvantage. He could navigate the trees easily, but Mizuki knew the terrain better. He had seemingly planned out an escape route in case things went south and he needed to high-tail it and run off without the scroll.

He could see Mizuki in the distance ahead of him, leaping up and down through the branches, changing his altitude constantly to avoid any thrown projectiles. Kunai and shuriken were ineffective at a time like this. He could aim and time throws fairly well on the horizontal, but he couldn't efficiently trail an enemy's position vertically while moving himself. Mizuki was a chuunin, and he knew what he was doing.

_That doesn't mean I'm going to give up though._

He had a way to force this chase into a confrontation, and after that, he could give that traitorous son of a bitch one hell of a beating. But he had to make him into a viable target first. He needed something big to throw.

With just one quick look to what was all around him, the answer was more than clear.

He landed on the next branch and slipped down beside it to hold himself fast against the tree with a thin layer of chakra. Pumping dark blue energy through his muscles, he wrapped his left arm around the branch and squeezed. An instant of intense pressure, and the bark and wood snapped loose. He grimaced at the jagged shards that cut through his jacket, but he ignored it. Pain could wait. There was work to do.

Mizuki was nearly out of sight, about to take a turn around a tree and guarantee Koan's failure. But that wouldn't happen.

_Ready,_ he nodded to himself.

Heaving the broken tree limb high up on his shoulder, Koan pushed himself into the air with chakra and marshalled his strength before he launched the broken branch, spinning end over end. The massive spiralling projectile smashed through the branches in its path and cleared the way to Mizuki in a rain of breaking wood. The bastard leapt high, spinning his way out of the wooden debris and splinters that took to the space between trees.

Koan almost smirked. _Perfect_.

The moment was set. Koan took careful aim, making hand seals all the while. One hand at his lips and red-orange light glowing behind his bulging cheeks, Koan gathered a ball of burning chakra in his mouth, compacted and scorching in his throat. He took in air sharply, and released fire bluntly. "Youton: Shakugaryuugan no Jutsu!" (Lava Release: Scorching Stream Rock Technique)

A barrage of fist-sized rocks, blackened and glowing and bursting with spurts of liquid flame, shot out into the forest, punching through bark and branch alike at speed. And it was all aimed for Mizuki. Trapped mid-air and mid-dodge, the bastard only had one option: down.

Mizuki latched onto the still-moving branch and kicked off towards the forest floor as a torrent of flaming rock sped overhead with a sound like rolling thunder, lighting up the night with meteoric streaks of fire and stone. Koan was already moving.

Sweeping around the tree's trunk with a chakra-laden hand on the bark, Koan predicted his enemy's movement just right. Slamming a fist into his chest as Mizuki appeared before him, Koan sent him tearing into the ground below, making a jagged crater with his body and a sudden cloud of dust with the impact.

Koan smirked this time. "Got you, you son of a bitch."

* * *

Iruka looked firmly to his right. "Naruto, take the scroll, get out of here and get reinforcements."

"No way," Naruto shook his head, tightening his grip on the scroll's strap. "I'm going to help you with this, no matter what."

Iruka pointed in the direction of the village. "No, Naruto. I'll take care of this. Go and get help. That's an order."

Iruka turned and bent his knees to leap into the branches.

"But what about Koan?"

Iruka stopped in his tracks before he answered. "I'll get him out of there and take over. Now go."

Iruka jumped into the canopy. He could hear Naruto's angry grumble as he made his way towards the sudden source of fire and calamitous _boom_ that rolled out of the trees like thunder.

Thunder was always a bad sign. It preceded storms, rain and lightning. But thunder without a storm suddenly seemed so much worse.

* * *

Koan ducked, blocked the downwards stab with an arm at Mizuki's wrist and lifted high. Guard open, Mizuki flew back into the trees. Koan lowered his leg, slipping back into his stance, palms facing the ground.

The exchange had been back and forth for all of ten seconds, fast and furious. He, the genin, managed to come out on top. Beginner's luck, perhaps. But, _damn_, it felt good to win.

"You had enough?" he asked of the forest, almost smirking.

Mizuki walked out of the tangled mess of roots, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and snarling. "You're cocky, you little shit. You're cocky and you're green as the leaves in my ass."

"And I'll beat the leaves right out of it," Koan growled. "Enough banter."

Mizuki smiled deviously. "Right..."

The burst of speed was startling, abrupt. Koan forced himself low and threw his arm into an uppercut. He met air, and then Mizuki met his back. He hit the ground hard, air pounded from his lungs by a knee to the spine. The distinctive _sigh _of a kunai's thrust whistled towards the dirt.

A single word exploded in his mind: _"Move!"_

Koan rolled onto his back. Steel nicked his ear, and a blade stabbed into the soil right in front of his eye.

More words boomed like thunder: _"Now!"_

Koan kicked both feet straight into Mizuki's exposed chest, sandals biting into armour from below with chakra-reinforced strength. Mizuki spat blood as he was tossed back into the crater. Koan rose to one knee, made two hand seals, and spat lava. "Youton: Kagandan!" (Lava Release: Fiery Rock Bullet)

Heat and chakra built in his throat, and rushed out in a single blackened boulder. Thick fire took to the air, and thicker smoke plumed out of the broken ground. The explosion was satisfying, but he doubted that alone was enough to finish off Mizuki. The scorched and smoking log split into smouldering pieces in the bottom of the crater proved his suspicions correct.

"Genin always prefer flashy jutsu, things that make the biggest noise and the biggest fiery boom," Mizuki's voice floated into the air mockingly. "They always seem to forget about the three basic techniques we hammer into them day after day at the Academy."

"Show yourself, you bastard!" Koan shouted into the surrounding forest.

Laughter rolled into the dark air. "And there you go again, forgetting what we taught you. You never wait for the enemy to come to you."

Shuriken lanced down from the canopy of dispersing smoke. Kunai in hand, Koan slammed metal stars into the dirt and roots below with splashes of airborne sparks, barely dodging the ones that passed by his blade. Mizuki's aim was nothing to scoff at, even in forest-strewn night.

The shuriken stopped with the last spark of his kunai, and then it was quiet. No noise, no whistling, no breathing other than his own slow and deliberate exhalations into the smoky air and the realisation that quite a bit of blood was trailing down his neck from the single cut on his ear. Sweat mingling with scarlet liquid felt odd, sticky and slick at the same time. But that didn't matter. Where was Mizuki?

A voice chuckled. "Got you, you son of a bitch."

The irony wasn't lost on him.

He turned, fist raised. He wasn't fast enough. A kunai cut through the mesh on his back like it wasn't even there and stopped his movement with searing jolts of pain. Then Mizuki twisted. A desperate groan leaked out of his mouth. It was all he could do not to scream as the agony ricocheted up and down his side.

Mizuki grabbed him by the neck and pushed the kunai in a little further. Groans turned into whimpers.

"You know, for a genin, you weren't all that easy to beat," Mizuki said into his ear, quiet words turning into a vicious laugh. "You actually made me work for it a little."

Mizuki pulled the knife loose and stabbed a foot into the hollow of his knee. Koan smashed into the ground on all fours, breathing coming in gasps, explosive puffs. It became harder to take in air when Mizuki kicked him in the gut, sending him careening into a tree trunk. It became even harder when he landed on the jagged puncture in his back. Pathetic whimpers turned into a cry of pain.

Pain ravaged his body, unrelenting agony shooting up and down his burning side. Blood was leaking from it, dripping out in waves of red and pooling beneath him. Mizuki began to walk towards him. He held his bloody kunai in plain view, a cruel grin plastered on his face, eyes alight with sadistic glee.

_Move, damn it. Come on, move!_

He could hear each step, each slight shift in the dirt with his bleeding ear planted against the ground as Mizuki approached.

His arms struggled to lift his bloodied carcass. _Come on, you bastard! Move!_

The pace quickened. The grip on the dripping kunai was reaffirmed.

His legs wobbled, but moved. _Come on! Almost there!_

Mizuki was almost on him.

_Inu, Ushi, U, Mi..._ "Youton: Shakugaryuugan no Jutsu!"

Solidifying orbs of lava streamed from his mouth in a torrent of molten desperation, slamming into trees with burning force, chewing through bark and wood and setting leaves aflame. Embers burst into the space. Another discarded log lay directly in front of him.

Another word exploded in his mind, louder than ever before: "_RUN!"_

Koan hauled himself off the ground, turned and leapt away from the burning flood of devastation raging through the trees behind him and into the branches.

The heat and smoke was almost enough to make his head swim. _Thank Kami for my blood_.

He wasn't sure where the hell he was going, but he knew he needed to run. He needed to get out of here.

_What the _fuck _made me think I could take on a chuunin and win? I'm not that stupid. I've never been that stupid. That's the kind of choice-_

He stilled mid-air, his legs nearly falling out from underneath when he hit the next branch, arms latching on just in time to keep him from falling.

_Naruto..._

Koan dangled from the branch for a moment.

That was why he did what he did. Mizuki was going to kill Naruto and Iruka unless he intervened, and here he was running away from a battle he needed to fight. And if Mizuki got away, he would come back to try and finish what he started.

_My punctured kidney be damned. I'm going to put an end to this asshole_.

Fists clenched, Koan pulled himself up on the branch and turned to where he had come from, the glowing spots of fire in the near distance and the embers whirling in the air, spreading the seeds of flame. He still had work to do.

Bracing himself to jump, Koan leapt towards the next-

Shuriken came at him mid-jump, shredding skin along his legs as he redirected himself for the tree trunk, slamming his body against the bark and holding it there with one chakra-reinforced hand. Fishing out a kunai, he dropped to the forest floor. The bark above him splintered into the air as a kunai weighed down with an explosive tag went off. He looked left, right, and then stepped forward out of the recess in the tangled roots.

"I've got you now."

A kunai came for his throat. Sparks flew, but it wasn't his kunai.

_I... I didn't sense that._

Iruka struggled; strain was evident in the lines on his face as he pushed into his traitorous colleague, blade for blade. "Get out of here, Koan! You're not strong enough to take on a chuunin!

Before he could say anything, mutter small words in defence of his actions or protest loudly at the insulting notion of fleeing a fight, Mizuki slipped away, five steps out his reach but only one out of Iruka's.

_Damn, they're fast._

And in a splash of dead leaves on the forest floor, they were out of sight, but not out of earshot. Words flew between them along with shuriken and kunai.

_"Take his advice: move."_

"Right," he mumbled to the air.

Ignoring the fading pain in his lower back and left calf, Koan took to the branches.

* * *

The bandaged gash in his thigh made movement a chore, but his body managed to fight. It was his mind that was the problem. What made it truly difficult for him to fight was who he fought: his best friend.

Iruka blocked a fast jab and deflected the thrust of a kunai with his. Mizuki backpedalled as Iruka stepped in with a fast one-two filled with blades, launching shuriken as he danced away from the approaching threat. Sparks flew into smoke-stained air as Iruka batted them away before returning the favour with a handful of his own shuriken.

Four kunai shot into the air, knocking the metal stars to the blackened ground. Iruka charged in the moment Mizuki threw, kicking high before spinning into an elbow and a stab of his blade. Mizuki ducked, blocked and bit his kunai into his.

They both pulled away, breathing heavy and coughing in the midst of smoke.

Iruka tightened his grip on the kunai's hilt. They had always been quite evenly matched. Back in their days as genin, one pulling ahead had always driven the other on to the same height of skill and prowess in combat, constantly striving to equal and surpass. A friendship founded in rivalry and laughter allowed them that. But now it allowed them something else: a contest.

They both knew the other's movements, their favoured methods of attack and preferred styles of momentary retreat. Not much of that had changed over the years. It wasn't down to outthinking the enemy or bringing down the opponent with cunning use of traps or well-timed attacks. It was a question of who had the better endurance.

Two shuriken sailed overhead. Iruka bent his knees before he kicked up a handful of dust into Mizuki's face as he rushed in from the side at the moment of distraction.

Eyes and mouth closed, Mizuki slid through the disappearing cloud and barrelled sidelong into Iruka. Grounded, Iruka rolled left and right as kunai jabbed into the dirt by his head before he extracted himself with hand seals. Time and space whizzed by in a blur of lines and black leaves as he replaced himself with a kunai jabbed into a tree's trunk. Pulling a blade free of his holster, he wrapped a tag around the hilt and let it fly.

_3... 2... 1... and..._

The sizzling noise trailing through the disturbed night air ended in a bang. Smoke and dust flew into the sky and another log clattered to the ground.

Iruka turned without a break in his stride, the heel of his sandal grinding on burnt leaves and dying embers. Glowing charcoal scattered underfoot and shot out into the air as hand seals made it come alive.

"Katon: Endan!" (Fire Release: Flame Bullet)

An orb of fire as large as him roared out and slammed into another of the same size, strength for strength, chakra for chakra. A second of contact, and the fireballs exploded. Flame billowed into the trees and set new fires ablaze in the night.

Iruka breathed, and Mizuki, separated from his former teammate by a carpet of leaves and ash, breathed with him.

The technique was one they had learned together. Taught to them both at the same time when it was discovered they each had an equal affinity for fire. And their affinity was still equal.

Iruka blinked dust from his eyes. Mizuki disappeared, and reappeared in front of him. Instinct told him, and the kunai already in his hand saved him. He held Mizuki's blade back with a grunt, a bare sliver of orange, flaming light between the point and his neck.

He could see his friend's eyes clearly now, even in the swirling dust and the darkness of the forested night. And he didn't recognise them anymore.

This wasn't the Mizuki he knew. This wasn't the kid he grew up with, who he attended the Academy and played prank and laughed and failed with. This wasn't the genin teammate he bled alongside in the line of duty, and this wasn't the newly promoted chuunin that cried with him when they lost their teammate because of a mistake he had made. This wasn't the chuunin instructor who walked back into the Academy by his side because he couldn't bear the weight of her death on his shoulders.

He didn't recognise the man in front of him, the man with the kunai in his hand and the furious glint of betrayal in his eyes.

Whoever this was, it wasn't Mizuki. It wasn't his friend. It was just some sick bastard using his face, some twisted son of a bitch who got kicks out of learning a man's life inside and out and then screwing with it in whatever way he wanted.

Whoever it was, he was going to pay for fucking with his best friend. Red filled his vision

Iruka pushed hard. Mizuki slid back a metre and ducked when Iruka flew at him feet first, a high roundhouse for his skull with a yell of something like rage. Mizuki came back and punched for his gut. He caught it with his belly and drove his knee up. Grunts followed on both sides. Kunai slashed for each other's throats. Within a matter of seconds, it was punches flying and blood flowing, blades stabbing and embers whirling around them as the fire built in the trees.

He was going to kill this pretender. He was going to murder this son of a bitch. Or he was going to rip apart until he could barely stand and make him talk. He was going to find out just what the fuck happened to Mizuki.

With blood in his eyes, bruises on his chest and gashes in his thighs, he thrust his kunai down with all his might. Then everything became clear as he lost his balance to Mizuki's kick to the back of his knee. He hit the dirt.

"Sorry, Iruka."

The tone was... not what he expected. It was sad, not vengeful. Rage was gone.

He accepted the inevitable, and closed his eyes to a ceiling of glowing red flames dancing in trees above and a bed of blackened leaves below.

"Iruka-sensei!"

His eyes snapped open to visions of orange turning into puffs of smoke in the hazy darkness.

"Shit, you're annoying, Kyuubi!" Mizuki bellowed. "Hurry up and die!"

"No chance, asshole!" Naruto retorted.

Naruto was forcing Mizuki back with clone after clone, solid copies smashing into him one after the other like a wave of fists and feet. White-grey smoke began to fill the glowing space between trees as Naruto himself charged, the scroll on his back...

Iruka heard Mizuki's feet leave the ground, a sound of shifting leaves barely audible over the sound of clones dispersing into smoke and the crackling of burning wood all around. And then there was a sizzle. A timer buried in the blackened leaves.

"Naruto!"

The explosive tag went off.

A blur of orange smashed headfirst into a tree with a crunch. Blood spattered onto the bark.

Iruka was on his feet and running before he knew what he was doing. His arm came up to hold smoke out of his mouth and nose, and another reached for a kunai from his holster.

Thoughts rolled in his head. _No. I'm not going to let him die. This pretender won't kill him. He won't. I promise he won't kill you, Naruto._

He raced through the leaves. Shuriken gained on him. He dove. Two flew overhead and over his shoulder. One jabbed into his jacket. Light armour saved the base of his neck.

Iruka landed on his side with a thud, pulling the metal star loose and leaving it somewhere in the leaves. He rolled to his feet, ran through hand seals and spat fire again. A ball of flames lanced through the trees and punched straight through Mizuki's position before it sent burning tendrils screaming into the canopy, setting more of the forest ablaze. He turned and ran.

"Naruto!" he yelled, grabbing for the orange jacket nested among the roots as soon as it was in sight. "Naruto!"

A boy's hands pulled a head of blond hair matted with blood upright between the roots with alarming speed. "I'm fine, Iruka-sensei."

He couldn't help but grab the kid in a hug, pulling him tight. "Oh, thank Kami you're alright."

Naruto stiffened suddenly, but quickly relaxed. "Thanks, Iruka-sensei."

The moment of sudden peace came to an end with a clapping of hands.

"Oh, while this is certainly touching," Mizuki's mocking voice came wafting out of the trees accompanied by the shift of leaves and dirt, "I'm afraid I'll have to leave you two for now."

He stepped out of the trees, fanning smoke out of his face with one hand, his other on...

"Yep," Mizuki grinned maniacally. "I've got the scroll."

His depraved smile turned sly in the darkness. "See you."

_No. This can't be happening._

Mizuki turned, burnt leaves scattering underfoot. Iruka let go of Naruto.

_I can't let this happen. I can't._

His knees bent slightly. Mizuki was about to jump.

_I won't- _

"-let this happen!"

A dark blur slammed into Mizuki mid-air, tackling him into the dirt and pummelling him into the ground with a barrage of fists.

Koan pulled his arm back, rage carved into his face. "Fuck you, bastard!"

Feet suddenly in his chest carried him up and over, delivering him back-first into a tree before two kunai came after him as Mizuki found his footing without a hitch. They clattered to the ground as shuriken knocked them out of the air. Naruto stood, arm and hand outstretched.

Mizuki's eyes darted right to the jinchuuriki. Iruka charged.

Their fight wasn't over.

Iruka came at him high, kicking up as Mizuki stepped back and away. He dodged with a strafing pace and jabbed out with a fist while preparing a hook to follow. Iruka blocked, ducked and brought a kunai up to be matched by another with a spark of force and steel. Mizuki pushed hard, and Iruka didn't see the kick for the ribs coming.

He fell back and rolled with the momentum.

His vision filled with steel, then orange-clad flesh.

Naruto groaned. A hand clutched at his stomach for almost a second, where the kunai was buried up to its hilt. Crimson trickled out of the gaps between the knife and the skin. Then Naruto's hands came up in front of him, in a cross-shaped seal.

Iruka couldn't see his face, but he almost heard the triumphant grin in Naruto's voice.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)

The orange glow of fire above and nearby was forgotten as a cloud of chakra-laden smoke formed and dispersed. Orange of a different sort replaced the flames.

Mizuki stepped back and looked up and around, wide-eyed. Iruka almost did the same.

Copies of Naruto were suddenly everywhere, all at once. Dozens and dozens of them filled the gaps between the trees and filled the branches until they began to falter under the weight of them. Blond kids wearing orange jumpsuits and a cocky grin filled the world of trees around them.

"Got you, you son of a bitch!"

Koan appeared again, smashing a devastating right hook into Mizuki's wide-open jaw with an audible crack and enough force to hurl him into the trees. Koan blurred after him before Iruka could react.

Neither could Mizuki, it seemed.

He heard a grunt, and then ducked as Mizuki suddenly flew back into the clearing, colliding with some of the orange copies of Naruto and sending more white smoke into the dirty air as he thudded to the ground.

Naruto stood up again, smiling. "Get him!"

The clones descended in droves, crashing down like stormy waves on a violent sea of orange. In less than twenty seconds, Mizuki was half-buried in the dirt, bruised and bleeding beneath another cloud of white-grey smoke.

Iruka picked up the scroll and hauled it over his back before he stepped over to Mizuki, his... _friend_ in the ground and groaning.

He shook his head slowly. "A waste."

"I'd say so," Naruto muttered, holding his stomach as he came to stand by him.

Iruka shifted his gaze to his student. "I thought I told you to take the scroll and go get help."

Naruto shook his head. "I couldn't leave you to fend for yourself."

"I would've been fine," Iruka replied sullenly.

"You probably would've been dead," Naruto countered.

"We probably all would've been," Koan interjected, coming to stand beside Naruto.

Naruto glanced to his right. "What are you even doing here?"

"I told you earlier," the taller one said.

"I don't remember what you said."

"Do you need me to remind you?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, then."

"... Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

"Yes. You just didn't specify when."

"Argh!"

Iruka shoved a hand in front of Naruto and held him back from throttling Koan. "That's enough."

Naruto stopped and stood back with nothing more than a tired grunt.

"What're we going to do with the bastard?" Koan asked.

"Take him to the Hokage, I suppose," Iruka suggested slowly. "Or perhaps to the ANBU – oh, they're already here. How convenient."

Six shinobi clad in animals masks and dark grey-blue armour flickered into the clearing and began to fan out, three moving to the edges of the area and three approaching him and the others.

Iruka cast tired eyes over them as the leader, a woman with an exposed length of purple hair falling down her back and a cat mask, moved over to him. Naruto and Koan watched in silence.

"We'll be taking Toji Mizuki in for interrogation," she said briskly, motioning two others to pull Mizuki loose of the dirt and restrain him.

The sound of rushing water caught him by surprise as the other shinobi began to perform minor Suiton jutsu, extinguishing the spots of flame making their way through the forest. He refocused on the purple-haired woman.

"Is there a reason you weren't here earlier?" Iruka asked, his eyes narrowed sharply. "You and your men could've assisted."

She held up a placating hand. "That was an operational error, completely on our part. I apologise for the danger you and the new genin were put in."

Iruka raised a cautious eyebrow. An ANBU agent apologising for anything on duty, let alone a mistake, was a rare thing indeed.

"Thank you, I guess," Iruka nodded somewhat, rubbing the back of his neck.

The woman returned the gesture and turned to her squad picking up Mizuki and flickering away once more.

Iruka looked back to his students.

Koan's eyes were suddenly trained on the ground, considering something as his mouth moved left and right in slight quirks. Though he was obviously thinking, the subject of those thoughts was not.

Naruto looked to the trees, then to the dirt and the burnt leaves before trailing up to the smouldering branches and the blackened, leafless canopy. He was... confused, perhaps.

Iruka shook his head. It didn't matter now.

"Come on, you two," he waved. "Let's go."

He began to walk, rubbing a hand at the secured wound in his thigh.

"Where're we going?" Naruto asked.

"To get you guys patched up," Iruka answered. "Then we'll go see the Hokage. I imagine we have a lot of explaining to do."

* * *

A woman stood in a dull hallway of concrete and steel, a kunai lazily looping around an outstretched finger. And, damn, she was bored.

_Bored. Bored. Bored, bored, bored..._

The noise of movement made her return her kunai to her holster.

"Ooh, goodie, a new person to play with!"

The purple-haired woman smiled with glee as she watched the ANBU agents haul a bruised and bloodied man with blue-white hair wearing typical Konoha shinobi garb into the third interrogation room along the hallway that held seven. Room Three was usually the one reserved for traitors for some reason. She was glad it wasn't used all that frequently, but she wasn't going to turn down a chance to squeeze information out of a rat-bastard's throat who dare betrayed the village.

It was going to be a little bit messy when she was done with him.

"What're you smiling about now, Anko?"

The woman in question turned, hands playing with the collar of her opened trench coat absentmindedly as she faced the girl in the cat mask.

"Well, hello to you, Yu-"

A hand was on her mouth before she could finish the rest of her sentence. She could feel the strictly professional disapproval oozing out of Yugao.

"You know protocol, Anko. Follow it," she ordered gruffly.

Anko smiled playfully. "You're in a fine mood today, Neko-chan."

Yugao groaned just a little. "You would be as well after dealing with such a shitload of incompetence."

"The new guy fucked up, I take it?" Anko cocked her head to the side in question.

Yugao shook her head. "Fuck up is a grievous understatement. This was the fuck up to fuck up all fuck ups."

This was something she had to know, then. "What'd he do to earn that accolade?"

Yugao sighed. "He read the map upside down."

Anko's eyes went wide. "You're serious? An ANBU agent had a map upside down?"

Yugao nodded.

Anko was on the floor in an instant, rolling around as she clutched her belly and laughed herself near to –self-pissing oblivion.

"Please, don't rub it in," Yugao whined.

When Anko finally settled herself down and wiped the jovial tears from her eyes, she nodded and grinned. "Alright, Neko-chan, I'll leave your name out of it when I retell the story the next time I'm at the bar."

Yugao sighed again. "I suppose that's the best I'll get out of you."

Anko's perpetual smile grew wider.

"Alright," Yugao said. "Down to business."

Anko nodded. "He's a traitor, right? That's why we're using Room Three."

"He's Toji Mizuki, a chuunin instructor at the Academy," Yugao filled in some of the blanks.

Anko frowned. "But what'd he do to get himself in such deep shit?"

She could almost hear Yugao's brow furrowing. "He tried to steal the Scroll of Sealing by getting the jinchuuriki to do it and then killing him and taking it from his corpse."

Anko grit her teeth. "Bastard."

Stealing something so valuable from the village was a despicable act, and more than enough to warrant a death sentence a dozen times over in conjunction with an extended stay in the lovely residences of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force. But tricking a lonely child desperate for attention into doing it for him and attempting to murder him right after? That was enough to make her _try_.

Yugao clamped a hand on her upper arm, steadying her as she began to shake slightly.

"Easy, Anko, easy," she said soothingly. "Just breathe."

Anko complied and felt herself calm just a little.

"That son of a bitch," she muttered quietly.

"I know," Yugao agreed, "but this doesn't feel right to me."

Anko raised both eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"My team and I were watching this guy for a month," she began. "We did the surveillance, we did the research and we did the proper security checks. But nothing about him was out of the ordinary. He fit the bill of a shinobi forced into semi-retirement by emotional trauma almost perfectly, and that was it."

Anko blinked a few times before the pieces began to fall into place. "But it was a little too perfect."

Yugao nodded. "Yeah, but even more than that, we were watching an Academy teacher. A fucking _teacher_. There was no warning, nothing at all that told us he was planning anything or conspiring with anyone, and then _this_ happens – with the jinchuuriki, no less."

Yugao was right. There was definitely something wrong here. It was all too sudden, all too rushed and forced and stinking of further conspiracy. Something larger was at work here, much larger than a crazed chuunin instructor and an attention-starved jinchuuriki.

"I'll squeeze the truth out of him," Anko nodded.

She turned to step towards the room, but Yugao's grip returned to her upper arm.

"Just... be careful, Anko," Yugao said quietly.

Anko smiled. "When am I not?"

The woman in trench coat returned the kunai to her finger and began to spin it without a care in the world as she opened the door.

_Always,_ Yugao mentally sighed.

* * *

"Alright, Umino-san, the wound is clean and properly sutured," the doctor said, leaning back from the bed Iruka had been sat on in the rather bare consulting room just off the entrance to the Konoha Hospital. "Just try not to put too much weight on that leg for the time being. We don't want to reopen the wound, now do we?"

"No, we certainly don't, doctor," Iruka agreed with a feigned smile. "Thank you for your time."

The doctor returned the genuine article as he walked to the door, placing a hand against the frame as he looked back. "Any time, Umino-san, but I hope you understand if I say I would rather not see you here in the future."

Iruka smiled somewhat, chuckling his agreement.

The doctor left, leaving Iruka with a moment to think.

_But what the hell am I meant to think?_

This didn't make sense. None of it did. His best friend a traitor – it was unthinkable. Mizuki had been there with him through everything, from childhood to the Academy, from that terrible night on the tenth of October thirteen years ago to their genin days, from their first Chuunin Exam to that day he lost Kasumi because of his miscalculations and entering the Academy as an instructor because he couldn't handle active duty anymore. He was his best friend through all of that and more. He knew him better than he knew himself.

Or... he thought he did.

He wasn't so sure anymore.

Iruka stood up and left the room, mindful of the pressure of the bandage wrapped tightly against his leg.

"And he said he didn't mean to," he muttered to no one.

The hallways were a combination of Konoha wood and clinical white, a mesh of sterility and comfortable familiarity. It was architecture typical of the village. Wood was a resource Konoha had no shortage of, and it was used in every facet of its design. Built in forest and built out of forest, the village belonged in it.

And Mizuki betrayed it all.

Iruka stopped walking as he reached the main desk in the quietly appointed lobby, complete with attached waiting room.

"Excuse me," he said, gaining the attention of the pretty-faced girl at the desk. "Do you know which rooms the two boys I checked in earlier are in?"

She consulted a clipboard on the desk, trailing a finger down the list of names. "Ah, yes. They've both been put in room... uh, 204. You'll find it on the second floor, fourth room on the right."

He uttered his thanks and made for the stairwell at a casual pace. The steps on the other side of the lobby were plain, unremarkable. He climbed them slowly, trying to find the words he needed as he walked. There had to be something to say, something he could tell the two boys about what happened, to try and calm what was surely a storm of thoughts and questions raging in their minds. But what was there to say when he had no real understanding of it himself?

The second floor was much like the first, almost identical to the hallways below. A few metres down the worn wooden flooring, he reached for the handle of 204.

Someone fell to the floor with a gasp.

Iruka was in the room in a split-second, kunai in his right and a fistful of shuriken in his left guided by alarmed eyes. He dropped his arms and weapons back to his sides as he took sight of the room.

Koan was standing, arm outstretched into a push with a nurse on the floor, recoiling in shock away from a broken syringe on the ground between him and her.

The chuunin reacted accordingly and helped the startled woman up with a hand before turning to the genin and hardening his voice for use. "What's going on here?"

Koan didn't say a word. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his lower back with his free hand, the other spinning a small stone on his palm.

"Are you going to answer me, _genin_?" Iruka pushed verbally.

Dark eyes shot up towards him. "I don't like needles."

The nurse by his side nodded. "I get that, but I need to take a sample. It's standard protocol during first admittance to have on file."

"He's not going to let you."

Naruto stood in the open doorway, a serious look in his eyes.

The nurse looked suddenly frightened. "But, it's standard-"

"Nurse," Iruka interrupted. "Please come back later."

She nodded fearfully and scurried out without a word.

Naruto walked in slowly before he slammed the door shut behind him. The dusty glass in the door rattled.

Iruka's features firmed. "What the hell is wrong with the two of you?"

Neither of them said a word.

He frowned. "Well?"

Naruto was the first to speak.

"I didn't want this," he said, nearly growling as he stared a hole into the floor. "I didn't want any of this. But it's here now. And I just found out about it. How else am I supposed to react?"

Koan nodded his agreement. "He has a right to be angry."

"And you have a right to shove nurses around for trying to do their jobs?" Iruka countered.

Koan said nothing.

"I thought so," Iruka said, crossing his arms over his flak jacket.

Naruto groaned quietly. "Leave him alone, Iruka-sensei. It's not like this is easy for him either."

Iruka raised a faintly curious eyebrow. "And just why is that?"

The door opened behind him.

"Koan brought something back to the surface, something I should've dealt with quite some time ago."

The Hokage stood behind him, his customary robes of red and white, quadrangle hat and all.

Iruka immediately inclined his head in a short bow. "Hokage-sama."

"Please excuse my intrusion on your impending lecture, Iruka-kun," the Hokage said in a respectful tone, "but I do have something to speak with you all about. It is merely more convenient if you are gathered in the same location to do so."

Naruto crossed his arms and sighed, resigned. "What is it, jiji?"

The older man closed his eyes for a brief moment, breathing once before he reopened them, dark eyes gazing tiredly upon the room.

"I am sorry, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said quietly. "I am sure you are deeply troubled by this and are searching for something to blame. Before you settle on yourself, here I am."

As Iruka watched on, Naruto gulped down air. "What... what are you talking about, jiji?"

The Hokage closed his eyes. "The law I made after I announced your identity to the village only exists because of my mistake in revealing you to them. I trusted them to honour the Yondaime's last wish: you were to be viewed as the hero you are. That trust of mine was misplaced, and my faith in the Will of Fire was shaken to its core. I am sorry."

Silence reigned. Naruto said nothing.

For a long, endless space of time, he stared, his eyes hopelessly wide, and his mouth contorting into shapes as Iruka watched him attempt to make sense of what he had just heard. But, slowly, the confused motions settled into quivering, and his eyes became something else: tearful. Naruto walked over to the Hokage, and threw his arms around him. He pulled the man in the white and red robes close.

Quiet sobs rolled out of the boy, and the Hokage held Naruto tight.

"It's alright, my boy. It's alright," he repeated in the tone befitting a kind grandfather comforting his dear grandson.

A minute of tears and silent consolation passed without a word spoken in the room. Iruka merely stood firm, controlling his face as emotion threatened to claw free from his iron grip on his heart.

This was all too familiar, all too close to home. He could still see a boy with a scar across his face, tears running down his cheeks in silence as he stared at the sky drenched in smoke and dust, rubble and ruin rising to a final peak somewhere in the starless heavens. He could still see that boy turning to see his best friend placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a tearful smile that stretched across the sadness of a dirtied, bloodied face still dripping crimson.

_Mizuki..._

He saw that moment after the storm at dusk once more.

The jinchuuriki and the Hokage parted. Naruto wiped at his eyes with a ripped orange sleeve, sniffing once or twice as the tears receded and the emotions drained away.

Naruto spoke in a small voice. "It's alright, jiji. I'm still angry, and I will be for a while. But I'll be alright. We'll be alright."

The Hokage offered him a grateful smile. "That is more than I can ask for."

Naruto nodded and sat himself on the other white-sheeted bed in the room, a pensive look passing over his face.

"Koan," the Hokage said, turning to face the genin on the other side of the room.

Dark eyes, the ones that had turned on him abruptly, were not so dark now. Koan's eyes shifted from darkness to a resemblance of... sorrow, or perhaps regret.

"I did not tell you who Naruto was," the Hokage said aloud. "I was still trying to protect him, even though I failed. And I was trying to protect you."

The dark-haired genin gazed at him with measured intensity, a pair of judgmental pits staring past Iruka and towards the older man with his hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered in deference and remorse.

"It was from... this, then," Koan whispered, almost inaudible. "This... game."

_Game?_

The word struck a chord in Iruka's mind, a pluck of some buried mental string that resonated within. Something about the word and its echo in his head was... off, distorted. It felt wrong.

The Hokage nodded, his face held in grave stillness. "It runs deep and long. I was trying to keep you safe from it."

Koan, much like Naruto, said nothing at first. His sight became distant, and his eyes glazed over. His fingers twitched slightly, and his foot tapped once, then twice against the floor. His body became rigid, stiff, but then he relaxed and his eyes returned to the world.

"I... understand," Koan said, seemingly unsure of his own words.

"If you or your..." the Hokage began, pausing for a moment before rephrasing. "If you have further questions, see me when you have time."

The Hokage's gaze finally turned to him. "Iruka-kun, I would like to you to visit the interrogation headquarters."

It came as a request, and perhaps it was, but he was the Hokage. His word was law, and his requests could not be denied, but did he mean...

"Mitarashi Anko requested your assistance in dealing with your old teammate," the Hokage continued. "You know him best, and she believes your presence may make him more amenable to disclose information."

Iruka's blood ran cold, and he didn't know why.

He internally shook his head, but nodded externally. Whatever his state of mind, he had a responsibility to carry out his Hokage's orders. If that meant assisting in the interrogation and possible torture of his friend, he could not let his emotions get the better of him. Duty came far before feeling in matters of the village's continued safety.

"I will go now, Hokage-sama," he said, bowing slightly.

Walking for the door, Iruka couldn't help the growing cold spreading in his veins.

* * *

Naruto shifted where he sat on the bed. He didn't find mattress particularly comfortable. He preferred his bedding on the softer side rather than the hard and supportive firmness of the hospital stuff. It was just too stiff, too inflexible and sterile for his liking. But that was a hospital in a nutshell: clean, sterilised and so very _white_.

The walls would eventually give him a headache if he kept staring at them. Which he was. Because he was fixating on everything but the present.

The Hokage stood sentinel in the room's centre, his hands behind his back as they normally were. But the old man's robes were slightly damp, and noticeable and the very _white_ lighting of the hospital room. His tears were still in the room.

He promised himself that he was done crying years ago, yet here he was, spilling his weeping guts all over the floor and the Hokage's robes. He felt something like embarrassment, but he wasn't used to the feeling, so maybe it was something else. But it was still quite painful, in one way or another.

What made it that little bit more painful for him was the presence of Koan across the room, sitting on the other bed.

He glanced over at him, the genin with the dark hair and the dark clothing and the serious air about him.

He knew virtually nothing about him. What he knew consisted of the facts that Koan was physically strong, disliked needles, and was similar to him in some way because 'he was like him', or whatever the hell that meant. He barely understood what he was at this point, so perhaps it was all irrelevant anyway.

The point was that a complete stranger had seen him cry, and that was what made it that little bit more unbearable.

Naruto sighed.

"Well, perhaps I should be going," the Hokage began, turning for the door. "Take care, boys. You both have team assignment at the Academy tomorrow, so get plenty of rest."

"Okay," Naruto nodded. "Good... wait."

_Team assignment. Team assignment? Oh, team assignment. That thing where the genin get put on teams, which I have tomorrow... oh._

"I'm... I'm... I'm..."

He couldn't find the words.

The Hokage pulled a blue-clothed hitai-ate from the folds of his robes and tossed into Naruto's hands. "You've... earned it, Naruto-kun."

The metal plate landed in his palms gently. He ran a finger across the reflective surface absently, right before he removed his old goggles and secured it around his forehead, tying the cloth tight.

The Hokage opened the door.

"You are a shinobi now, Naruto-kun. You are one step closer to your goal," he said, smiling proudly.

The Hokage looked to Koan. "I'll check you two out at the front desk when I leave. Perhaps you should use this time to explain."

He closed the door behind him.

"Explain?" Naruto echoed, looking towards Koan for an answer. "Explain what?"

"I'll tell you once we're somewhere quiet," he said. "Follow me."

Koan walked out with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and not another word out of his mouth. Naruto followed along a few paces behind.

Maybe it was his natural curiosity getting the better of him, or the lack of time given to process all the new information floating in a jumbled mess throughout the vacuous space that was his mind, but he followed him without questioning it. Or maybe that it was he had no reason to suspect anything from him.

Suspicion was a typical state of mind for him to remain in. Mizuki had proven that. But the Hokage seemed to trust Koan, talking to him in an oddly familiar way... and similar to the way the old man talked to him. So he followed.

Just where Koan was taking him, he didn't know. At this point though, he didn't really care. He was a shinobi now.

As they left the hospital and began to roam the darkened streets, Naruto lifted his head a little higher.

He didn't want it this way, but a chance to be free was close by. Maybe it was freedom from people, or the walls of the village one day, or the shadows that seemed to hang around him, or maybe... it was freedom from the Kyuubi.

But it didn't matter. It was freedom, and it was in reach. He was going to take it with both hands.

* * *

The Hokage settled himself into the chair of his office once more. His time spent at the hospital coupled with the smaller administrational tasks that he needed to attend to on the way back had delayed his return to his office to resume more of those administrational tasks. But at least he would have a moment now to smoke his pipe in relative-

The door to his office burst open. Iruka clutched at the doorframe, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Hokage-sama..." he muttered breathlessly. "Mizuki is... Mizuki is..."

He was at the man's side in an instant.

"Take a moment, Iruka-kun," he urged.

Iruka nodded and gulped down air, rasping gasps in and out through his mouth.

When he had finally regained some semblance of breath, Iruka concluded.

"Hokage-sama... Mizuki is dead."

No time to smoke his pipe, then.

* * *

_So, this is it._

_Hopefully it's turned out alright. If it hasn't, please let me now in any way you want to. I'm pretty desperate for feedback on this because I really, really want to improve this story and hopefully take it up to the levels of the giants of Naruto fanfic like _Kenchi618_, that new guy I love, _Eilyfe_, a personal favourite of mine,_ Kingakashi,_ and __the author who does the great Naruto crossovers, _The Engulfing Silence. _I'm nowhere near them yet, but that's the goal. _

_And I can't do it alone. _

_If you have advice, give it. If you think my writing's shit, tell me why. If you just like this and want to tell me that you do, then tell me._

_This is a great community, and I'd really like your support with this._

_Thanks, guys._

_With a hope in my heart and a dream in my head,_

_A238_


	3. 2: Shadows

_Yep, I'm back. And in reasonably short order, too._

_Anyway, this is going to contain some pretty dark themes. Like torture. Yay._

_I should probably up the rating._

_But, whatever. Here's Chapter 2._

* * *

Chapter 2: Shadows

* * *

"I'm sorry, Anko, but we won't have any Yamanaka on hand for at least two days," Morino Ibiki said, tapping a finger against something on a clipboard after he had flipped through a few pages.

Anko resisted the urge to groan. She did not succeed.

"Oh, that's just great. I'm being fucked over by the administrational shit-stick, and not in the good way," she almost growled.

Ibiki sighed, rubbing a hand against the back of his scarred neck as he leant into his desk. "Trust me when I say I know the feeling. It happened to me a few times when I was a rookie here."

Anko just stared at him. "I'm not a rookie."

"Yeah," Ibiki agreed quickly, "but my point is that this kind of thing happens. People, especially clan people, have other obligations."

"But these are the Yamanaka," Anko moaned. "They pull information out of minds for a living."

Ibiki tapped at his clipboard again. "And it seems that their living has seen the ones we need working outside of the village for now."

Anko shrugged and began to walk away. "Inoichi would probably the only one cleared for this shit, anyway."

"Yeah..." Ibiki agreed again as she left the room.

Heading back to the third room, Anko could not help the sense of frustration nearly wafting out of her pores. It was if fate itself was conspiring against her to keep her from doing her job.

The first thing was the nature of the prisoner. This wasn't some foreign bastard trying to steal military secrets from under their nose. This was one of theirs trying to do it. That made it an extremely delicate situation, not to mention that it shoved a shitload of additional restraints on her regular duties. Though it hardly ever happened, there were rules and regulations in place that she had to adhere to when putting a traitor under interrogation. For instance, she could, under no circumstances, harm or injure any part of his head, face or mouth without express permission from the Hokage. And she didn't have that. That meant no dislocated jaw, no broken nose, no pulled teeth, no cuts to the tongue, no cheek fracturing, and worst of all, no eye damage.

She realised it was meant to prevent any possible damage to information in his brain and the verbal delivery of that information, but what the hell did he need his eyes for? To see her next move coming? It wasn't like he was moving around or anything. Handcuffed with chakra restraints and strapped to a metal chair bolted to the floor in a heavily guarded room in one of the most secure buildings in Konoha, he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

And she liked to flick people in the eye. It was fun.

Second was the lack of available resources. Of course, the moment she was handed a traitor to deal with, she lost access to her most valuable asset in the twin arenas of torture and interrogation: a Yamanaka. They were a clan of mind readers, walkers and manipulators. Their sole claim to what passed for fame in the shinobi world was their fearsome ability to influence and control the mind. And, right on schedule with the rest of the bullshit, there weren't any in the village with the security clearance to work with her on this. The only one of the entire clan she or Ibiki would've really trusted the task of tearing through Mizuki's mind to was Inoichi, and he was conveniently absent, attending some mission near the Hi no Kuni capital involving a noble family, a case of murder motivated by inheritance, and a bloody spoon.

_Of all the murder weapons, a spoon? I lost out to a spoon?_

Anko clutched at the bridge of her nose and reined in a sigh as she walked.

Thanks to Inoichi's services currently engaged elsewhere, it left her in an irritating position. Her regular style of interrogation wasn't applicable to the traitor because of _regulations_, and the predictable stuff she had tried just got him even more tight-lipped, even when the two genin and the chuunin who had beaten him down left him so black and blue they'd needed a med-nin to heal him just enough that he could sit upright and talk.

And then the third thing that made it even worse was...

"Wait. Is there even a third?" she wondered aloud.

"Well, there's a third option I just thought of," Ibiki said from behind her as he shoved a file into her hands.

Anko opened it up. "And what is this supposed to... oh. _Oh._ Not a bad idea, Ibiki."

"Best get him down here quick, Anko," Ibiki said over his shoulder as he headed back down the boringly grey corridor to his equally boring office.

Anko shook her head. "Why is everything so grey down here, anyway?"

No one around to answer her question, she rushed off to throw her request for that chuunin instructor's assistance in the face of the appropriate person.

* * *

Koan walked slightly ahead of him on the dark streets, one or two paces in front as he led the way.

Naruto was curious. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere quiet," he answered, glancing over his shoulder.

Naruto frowned somewhat. Koan was definitely not big on conversation. He didn't say much, and what he did say was kept short and direct. Or horrifically vague in the case of finding out where he was leading him as they kept walking through the quiet streets of Konoha, first passing closed storefronts and then residential complexes and finally some administrative buildings. He knew Konoha quite well, and certain parts like the back of his hand, but Koan was taking unnecessary turns, to many detours down side streets and little cuts through alleyways as they walked a strange path through familiar structures. It was almost as if he was... stalling for time. He just wasn't sure why.

There were a number of theories he could go for, some plausible, some just relatively unlikely, and some probably completely stupid in ways he couldn't even imagine.

_I doubt he's luring me into a trap involving a catapult filled with whipped cream and a cage made of strangely shaped carnivorous plants, so I'm just going to go with finding the words to explain whatever it is he needs to explain to me_.

At least that made some kind of sense. Besides, where would Koan find a catapult filled with whipped cream at this hour?

Shaking off his deranged line of thinking, Naruto looked up and realised where they were headed.

"Oh," he mumbled, "the mountain."

Koan didn't turn around. "Yeah."

Naruto nodded. "It's definitely quiet up there."

"Yeah."

"Especially at this time of night. Or morning. Which is it?"

"Yeah."

"... am I annoying you or something?"

"A little."

Naruto remained silent as they began to climb the stairs, passing beneath the entrance gate to the walkway that would take them up the Hokage Monument.

Climbing was a little bit of a chore. The stab wound in his gut moved up and down against his bandages uncomfortably, almost enough to make him wince with each step. But he ignored it. He'd taken the kunai for Iruka-sensei. If he hadn't, it would've cost a life instead of a temporary limitation on his ability to climb stairs. The trade was worth every needle of agony poking and prodding at his intestines.

And he'd do it again because Iruka-sensei cared.

He didn't say it, didn't tell him outright or imply it with his words. He showed it. He put his life on the line for the kid with the Kyuubi in his belly. Naruto would do the same a dozen times over if it meant he could show his teacher just a fraction of how much it meant to him.

Without a doubt, Iruka-sensei was one of the very few people he held close to his heart. He could count them on one hand, and with one finger to spare.

His first two came at once, when kindness in the form of food had been handed to a hungry child by a man in an apron and his daughter. Teuchi and Ayame were good people, the very best people he knew.

The third was the third. The Sandaime Hokage – jiji – was very much like a grandfather to him. While he hadn't known him first, he remembered being shown into his apartment by the old man in the robes and hat with a comforting smile and a gentle hand. He became more and more important when Naruto was continually surprised by his visits every few weeks. When he said the first time he would check on him in the near future, history told him that wouldn't be true. He was so glad to be proven wrong.

And the fourth was Iruka-sensei. He'd been infuriating at first, occasionally strict at the Academy and sometimes boring with his lectures on village history, but he'd come to understand him somewhat over the years. But then Mizuki happened, and it all changed. Iruka-sensei was suddenly important to him.

And it felt damn good to have one less finger left unoccupied on his hand.

"We're here."

Naruto looked up.

The long walkway was behind them, along with the walls of rock they had passed on the way up. Across a cool grassy clearing, leaves swayed in the gentle night's breeze as it ebbed and flowed through the trees. The calm hums and chirps of little insects provided an odd sense of rhythm to the moonlit quiet. Atop the mountain he rarely climbed all the way, it was peaceful.

"I can see why you like it here," Naruto noted absently as he moved slowly around the clearing, sandals padding softly on the grass.

Koan stepped closer to the edge, towards the view. "It's calm."

"Do you come here a lot?" Naruto asked, walking to his side.

Still focused on the edge, Koan didn't turn. "Some time ago, but it's been a while."

Naruto looked down on Konoha. During the day, there were so many people doing so many things in so many places. From above, it all looked so messy, so comfortably chaotic. But at night, Konoha was a different place. It was a quiet place, calm and settled. The village looked so very peaceful as it slept, the moonlight shining down through traces of cloud in the starry sky on buildings and homes and streets and parks. He was far fonder of the village while it slumbered.

Looking up, towards the horizon shrouded in forests and mountains, Naruto smiled a little. "The view hasn't changed much, but it's a little different from the top of the mountain. I usually sit on the heads when I come around here."

"We all have our preferences," Koan said with a nod before he fell into silence, eyes on the grass peeking over the edge.

Naruto gestured to the precipice. "Should we sit down?"

Koan turned and walked back a few metres into the clearing without a word, closer to a metre-high boulder he hadn't taken much note of near the centre. He stepped up on top, sitting down with a sigh as he leant forward on his knees, hands folded beneath his chin.

Naruto hopped up next to him, putting a bit of space between them as he did so.

And Koan didn't say anything. He just sat silently, eyes narrowed slightly at nothing in particular.

_This is awkward to say the least._

Naruto kept his thought to himself, but the silence wasn't comfortable. He was just a little on edge as he waited and watched and listened for Koan to do something or say something. He wasn't a big talker, but he couldn't imagine that Koan was enjoying the awkward silence either. He just didn't know where to start with him.

Koan didn't seem like a lot of other people. It was the quiet combined with the oddly deep voice and the relentlessly casual demeanour that kept Naruto from pinning him down as one particular kind of person. If he knew that, it would make him easier to relate to. But Koan hadn't given anything away, and his outward appearances did little to help.

Koan wore a black hoodie, black pants and charcoal-grey holsters and pouches secured with tape of the same colour. His skin was slightly darker than the average person's, his relatively short hair was very dark brown, and his eyes were that weirdly murky brown flecked with yellow of all things.

_He really does like his dark colours_. Unfortunately for him, however, that still didn't tell him anything more than his preference in clothing. The only place he could start was with the only way he knew how: single words and common ground.

"So..." he began and simultaneously trailed off, attempting to break the ice with a single word. It didn't work.

Another moment passed without words. Naruto made another attempt.

"Uh, so I'm a genin now. That's something, right?" he offered with an uncertain shrug.

Koan nodded, but he still didn't say anything.

_Damn it._

"This is quite the boulder," Naruto said, trying to look interested as he pretended to examine the large rock they sat on.

"Yeah," Koan muttered. "It was the first time I really succeeded with Doton jutsu."

Naruto nodded, rather impressed. "That's pretty cool... wait. You said something."

Koan turned to him, one eyebrow slightly raised. "Is that so surprising?"

"Yes," Naruto said instantly.

Koan placed his elbow on his knee and supported his head with his hand. "And why is that?"

"Because you barely say anything!" Naruto said a bit too loudly and a bit too quickly. "I mean, you don't say that much to begin with, but when you do, it's just ridiculously short answers that are either extremely direct or annoyingly vague. And it doesn't even seem like you're doing it on purpose or doing it to try and be cool or something. I swear, it's almost like it's just who you are."

"It's exactly who I am," Koan deadpanned.

"Oh," Naruto mumbled out as he began to scratch the back of his neck. "Then what was my point?"

Koan shrugged.

"That looked awkward," Naruto observed.

Koan shrugged again. "It is what it is."

"And the 'what it is' is very awkward," Naruto reinforced with a nod.

Koan sighed. "This conversation is getting awkward."

"Very," Naruto agreed.

Koan looked down again, one of his fingers beginning to tap against the stone.

_Yeah, I'm getting sick of this. Explaining begins now_, Naruto decided.

"Jiji said something about you explaining a couple of things to me before," Naruto began quietly. "What exactly is there to explain?"

Koan remained silent.

Naruto frowned. "Well, if you're not going to answer that, then how about this: back in the hospital, why'd you push that nurse?"

Koan leant back on his hands and sighed. "I was angry."

At least they were getting somewhere now.

"Yeah, I get that," Naruto nodded. "But you said something about disliking needles. What's that about?"

Taking weight off his hands, Koan shifted closer to the boulder's edge. "Needles are... intrusive."

"Makes sense, but kunai do the same thing. They make bigger wounds, too," Naruto said, tapping at his stomach for emphasis. "Shouldn't you dislike kunai as well, then?"

"No one likes getting stabbed," Koan snorted, his nostrils flaring slightly. "But needles and kunai are not the same thing. They're similar in design, but different in purpose."

Naruto cocked his head to one side. "What do you mean?"

Koan glanced at him, then back towards the view. "Kunai make wounds. Even if it's painful, they give something. Needles just take. That's why I don't like them."

Naruto nodded absentmindedly as he thought it through. Koan made a strangely solid point. Kunai, even though they caused pain and death, even though they _inflicted_ something, gave. Perhaps it was a scar, a reminder of what not to do, or even quiet thanks that the wound wasn't any deeper. But the same couldn't be said for needles, not when they were taking blood.

_But what about injections?_ Naruto wondered for a brief instant before shaking his head. There was little point in continuing when Koan had already made his point. Though, there was something that still bothered him.

Naruto turned his eyes to the one next to him. "... Why were you angry?"

Koan's eyes locked onto his firmly. "I'm still angry."

"Then why _are_ you angry?" he rephrased.

Eye contact broke. "It's because all of... _this_ was kept from me."

He knew what Koan was referring to.

Naruto leant back slightly. "It was kept from me, too. But how does it affect you?"

Koan turned away without a word, looking up to the clouds. "Well... I'm like you."

"How?" Naruto asked.

Koan sighed before he began. "You're an orphan. So am I. You know what it's like to be alone. So do I. You have a bijuu sealed within you. I do as well."

His background as an orphan made sense to him. In the rare times he'd taken notice of Koan before or after class, it was never with family, with people that looked similar to him in any way. He was alone. From that, the knowledge of isolation and solitude made sense, too. Koan wouldn't have suffered the same as him, the same stares and the same mistreatment from people in the village, but that didn't mean he didn't know anything about seclusion. Sometimes, being unseen among a crowd was worse than having hateful gazes forced upon him as he walked by.

But the last thing...

"What's a... bijuu?"

"They are... difficult to explain," Koan said after a moment. "Some would say that they are demons, immortal monsters composed of living chakra. In some aspects, that could be considered correct. But it's not. They are immensely powerful, but that does not make them monsters. At least, not any more than the people who enslaved them."

Koan exhaled slowly, looking to the ground. "The bijuu are chakra given consciousness, intelligent power. They are living, thinking beings that humans began to use as weapons long ago. Those weapons were made by sealing a bijuu within a human, most often from birth. Those who contain bijuu are called jinchuuriki."

Koan looked directly at him. "There are nine bijuu, each named and given strength by the number of tails they possess. The Kyuubi is the strongest, but the others are far more powerful than any mere mortal. That is what makes jinchuuriki so feared. And it's why we are not like everyone else."

Koan closed his eyes. "And from that, it's why we're cast aside, kept at two arm's length until they have need for a _weapon_."

Naruto looked down, just staring at the rock they sat on. He couldn't do much of anything else, not when the idea that there was someone like him began to swirl in his mind, filling his thoughts entirely. It all made sense, more than it had before.

Mizuki's ravings told him why he was looked at with contempt by the villagers, why he was kept from a chance at a normal life: the Kyuubi. The shadow of the fox, one that had once hung over the village and rained down fire and death on the people, now hung over him. But it didn't make sense. Beyond a way of simply defeating the Kyuubi, why was it sealed into him? For what purpose was he kept alive other than on the old man's kindness? If he really was the Kyuubi in human form, why hadn't they just killed him when they had the chance and saved him the misery of growing up alone? He had the answer now.

"... but we're not."

Naruto's eyes snapped over to Koan's, his already trained on him, suddenly intense.

"Purpose is one thing, but reality is another," he said. "Reality is choice."

_Choice..._

If he could choose, then why was he here? Why was he weighed down by an overwhelming shadow and forced down a path that he hadn't wanted to walk in the first place? Didn't he get a say? Didn't he get to use his voice to mumble or shout or whisper or cry out something, anything against what he didn't want?

"I didn't choose this," Naruto whispered. "I never wanted this."

Koan nodded slowly. "I didn't either."

"Then who did?" Naruto asked, slightly louder.

Koan looked to the sky. "Names don't matter in this. Intent does. The reason you were made into what you are does."  
Naruto did the same. "And what reason was that?"

"To save Konoha," Koan stated. Again, it came across as just another fact, another unquestionable and undisputable piece of reality.

But a question still gnawed at him.

"Why me?"

Koan shifted his gaze back to him sharply. "Would you have someone else carry the weight of the Kyuubi on their shoulders?"

Naruto returned the force in his eyes. "No."

Koan closed his eyes once more. "That's why."

He nodded just a little.

He didn't get it all. He didn't think he would ever get it all. It wasn't his choice to make, but it was a choice that had to be made. So many lives had been at stake; so many people and families and children had been at risk. To stop the Kyuubi, a choice was made, and he lived with the consequences. But at least he was living at all. If some other child had been used, it might've all gone wrong. If it had been someone else, so many more could be dead. But it was him. And he could take it. He had too. And Koan had too as well.

He looked at his... friend? Comrade? Brother in burden? He didn't know what to call him, but it mattered little. What mattered was that he wasn't alone in his struggle. It wasn't just him holding such an enormous weight on his shoulders. Sitting atop a boulder in front of a forest on a mountain, they were in this together.

So much understanding and misery forced upon him in a single night, it felt good to smile, even if only a little.

Naruto glanced over at Koan. "Hey, which one do you...?"

Koan opened one eye. "The Yonbi. He's often referred to as Sen'en no Ou, the King of the Sage Monkeys."

"'He'?" Naruto echoed.

Koan rotated slightly towards him. "Yes, 'he'. Did you think they were genderless or something?"

Naruto scratched at his head. "Well, uh, I don't know. Maybe? It's not like I know all that much about them. You're the expert here."

"Eh, comparatively," Koan shrugged. "The competition isn't exactly fierce."

Naruto nodded with a sigh. "True, but it'd probably be good to learn about them at some point."

"Remind me at some point," Koan said, closing his eyes again.

Naruto cocked his head to one side. "Are you getting sleepy?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Listening."

"For what?"

"Quiet."

"That doesn't really make sense. How can you listen for quiet?"

"Quite easily."

"Well, you're not really succeeding now, are you?"

"That's because you keep talking."

"... should I stop?"

"Please."

* * *

Anko put her face in her hands and groaned for the umpteenth time. The guy wasn't at the desk. The guy was a different guy from day to day. With too many faces to remember when she already had a few hundred filed away for both work and personal reference, she simply referred to the guy at the desk as... well, just that: the guy at the desk.

And the guy at the desk was not at his desk when she needed to file a requisition before she could go run off and snag the chuunin she needed for her yet-concluded interrogation session.

"Of course, this happens to me when I'm trying to get things done quickly," she muttered aloud.

"What's gone wrong now, Anko?"

Anko turned and smiled sweetly at the ANBU agent suddenly beside her. "Well, hello to you, too, Neko-chan. What brings you back down to my little slice of torturer's paradise?"

"The sunny weather and glorious ocean views, obviously," Yugao replied in the same forced tone before she dropped back to her regular self and held up the folder in her hand. "No, I was here to give Ibiki some copies of more of those useless reports my team wrote during recon. But what's going wrong?"

"I need to get that chuunin teammate of the traitor's down here, but the guy who does the requisition stuff for that isn't here," Anko muttered, gesturing with a hand to the unoccupied desk in another dull, grey corner.

"I'll wring that guy-at-the-desk's neck if he shows up tomorrow," she quietly growled. "I might even wring the other guy's neck if he doesn't."

"Yes, yes, Anko," Yugao patted a placating hand on Anko's back, "bureaucracy is bullshit."

Anko threw her arms around the woman still in her grey armour and cat mask. "Oh, you always know just what to say to cheer me up, Neko-chan."

Yugao pushed her off quickly. "That's enough, Anko. I'm not off duty yet. Though..."

"That gives you an idea that might help me speed up this bureaucratic nightmare?" Anko finished for her quickly, almost bouncing up and down.

"Yes," Yugao nodded.

Anko leapt into the air, pumping her fists. "Hooray! Neko-chan's going to do the thing!"

Yugao snatched the paperwork out of Anko's hands and began to walk away, sighing the entire time. "Yes, Anko. I'll do the thing."

* * *

Iruka walked down the dark streets at a brisk pace. He had somewhere to be.

The route to the Torture and Interrogation headquarters wasn't a familiar one, but he knew where the building was. Any shinobi who'd served for more than a year knew their way around the village. Perhaps some knew it better, and perhaps some memorised the village in its entirety, street by street and home by home, but they all knew where the important things were.

At the moment, the important thing was giving assistance in the interrogation of one Toji Mizuki.

Iruka was filled with dread.

He didn't want to see his best friend battered and bruised, cut and bleeding by his own hands and the hands of the interrogator, Mitarashi Anko. He knew the woman's reputation, and despite her playful, overly colourful demeanour and revealing style of dress, she was good at her job. If she needed his help in interrogating Mizuki, then Mizuki was putting up one hell of a fight in resisting.

If he had been captured in another village, another place at another time, he would've cheered, shouted and raised a fist to the sky at the news of his friend holding out, his Will of Fire unbroken and unaffected. But here and now, he didn't know what to think.

_And that is not a good thing_, Iruka thought. His distraction was removing him from the task at hand, assisting in the interrogation of a traitor.

_Yes, that's it – traitor._

This wasn't Mizuki. His best friend wasn't in a locked cell, bleeding from his shattered kneecaps as a woman who knew what bones to break and what nerves to pinch to make a man scream his loudest circled him like a vulture. His long-time teammate and colleague wasn't shouting for the pain to stop or swearing his guts out at an interrogator wiggling a kunai in his belly, steering clear of organs to make sure he lived a little longer. Mizuki wasn't alone. Mizuki wasn't afraid. Mizuki wasn't a traitor.

It was someone else.

Iruka, stone-faced, continued walking down dark streets.

_It's a mission. Complete it._

* * *

In a cold, concrete room with little within, Anko took silent steps around the sleeping, half-naked form of Toji Mizuki, the traitor in her care for the time being. Cuffed quite tightly to the sole steel chair in the room, the man was slumped back, breathing heavily, his mouth wide open. The numerous thick red lines crossing his black chest and his blue back definitely explained just why he was so exhausted, so utterly drained.

"Ha, blood loss," she chuckled quietly.

Torture was tiring, sometimes for both parties. The receiver was made tired by the boatloads of pain dealt out upon them when they didn't answer questions. The giver was made tired by the lack of results.

She could stab him, she could cut him, she could rip off a toenail, dislocate each finger one by one until she gave up and just started breaking them, but he held out, breathing so very heavy, eyes so very bloodshot and heart rate so very erratic.

_"Is that... all you've got?"_ _he spat between coughs of blood._

_She smiled. "Nope."_

He certainly had a pair of lungs on him. She was also certainly glad to find out that the room was thoroughly soundproof.

_Speaking of chests..._

His was stained with blood and bruises, not to mention one or two rather long burn marks when she was getting a little bored of one kind of reaction to her poking and prodding. But beneath it all, it was a little bit flabby. She supposed that happened when a shinobi retired from active duty and took up a position teaching their next generation and decided to betray the village and steal from them and attempt to murder a lonely boy looking for a chance to prove himself to his teacher and move up in the world that kept him from finding purpose. Not that she was thinking to deeply on it or anything.

But still, his torso was a little bit flabby. His abs weren't as defined and solid as they had once been; his obliques were starting to sag; his pectorals looked a little on the sad and pudgy side.

She looked down at her own chest hidden vaguely behind mesh and trench coat, then back to his with a frown. "Damn, keep that up and you'll have bigger tits than me."

"Fuck... you... bitch..." Mizuki coughed as he stirred.

Anko smiled. "Did I wake you? Sorry about that. You definitely could use the sleep, but we still have a few things to go over."

"I'm not... telling you shit," he tried to snarl.

Anko's smile grew wider. "No? Then maybe your shit might tell me what I want to know."

Mizuki looked confused. "The fuck are you talking about?"

"If you keep this up," Anko began slowly, moving down to eye level with Mizuki, "I might just be forced to make you literally excrete the information. And that is not pleasant for any parties involved, but especially for my hand when it goes up through your ass and starts to pull."

Mizuki spat in her eye.

Anko stood gradually, wiped the spittle from her left eye with an exaggerated rub and crouched back down behind him.

"That wasn't very nice, Mizuki," she said in a sing-song voice as she pressed two fingers into his side.

"Fuck... you," he groaned out through gritted teeth as she began to move further south to a particularly nasty cut.

He almost screamed when she dug her fingers into the opening and pushed down and to the right.

"Why'd you try to steal the scroll, Mizuki?" she whispered into his ear. He began to whimper when she moved her other hand onto his left side. "Come on. You can tell me. I know you want to."

"I'm not... telling you... SHIT!" he screamed as she stabbed her fingers into the last cut's symmetrical partner and squeezed.

She moved her head above his and looked him dead in the eye. She smiled. "Are you sure?"

His body stiffened.

She was about to put a senbon in a certain spot to make things a bit more exciting when a knock on the very heavy steel door pulled her attention away from the moaning, whimpering mess that Mizuki was quickly becoming. She pulled her bloodied fingers loose of the wounds, looked to Mizuki for a moment as she let the liquid drip, and then licked them clean for effect before she slid open a viewport in the door.

"The chuunin is here," the guard's voice came through.

Anko nodded. "Send him in."

A series of metal clinks and clangs range out as the mechanisms were unlocked from the outside and the sealing matrix was briefly deactivated. The door was slowly hauled open, and the Academy teacher that wasn't a traitor stepped inside. The door locked behind him.

Anko looked at him in time to see his eyes widen drastically as he looked at the prisoner, his body and then the floor beneath him. She guessed it could've been shocking to someone unprepared for the sight, but maybe the guy was more horrified at the sight of a friend of his in chains above a puddle of their own blood still in the process of being made.

His eyes turned back to her, judging, trying to make sense of what he saw. Maybe he was looking for an answer to the whole shit-storm still raging behind her. But neither one of them had the time for it.

"Umino Iruka?" she asked.

"Yes," he nodded, quickly assuming a rigid stance out of the gaping mess he had been a moment ago.

"The prisoner has been unwilling to cooperate, even with application of more forceful measures," she said, trying to keep her tone professional. She hated doing these exchanges of meaningless dialogue, but there was an odd sort of protocol to it, especially when there was a personal attachment between the one in the chair and the one standing in the room. Perhaps talking about it in more objective terms helped to avoid any unnecessary outbursts or shows of emotion, but it didn't work all the time. Experience had told her that much.

She was about to continue when Iruka interrupted.

"Do you think I could get a few moments alone with the prisoner?" he asked, glancing at her. "I may be able to assist the interrogation that way."

She'd had a feeling it would be coming.

"Understandable," she answered with a nod. "You have five minutes."

She knocked on the door from the inside. The mechanisms whirled once again, and it was hauled open with a grunt. Stepping outside and hearing it slam shut, she hoped he would be able to grab something solid out of the smoke surrounding this entire thing.

* * *

He had expected blood, cuts, oozing wounds and horrific bruising. He had expected broken bones, contorted fingers and ruined feet. He had expected the results of torture.

He just hadn't expected the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing his best friend lying beneath that tormented skin of swollen red, black and blue.

At first, he just stared. He just looked at it all. He saw the red lines, the cuts that began near his waist and carved up his sides before they continued up and over, passing his shoulders and heading down his back in one line, one unpausing motion. He saw the bruises on top of bruises, the dead, darkened skin he had played a part in creating. He saw the arms dangling loosely in their sockets, the fingers down below warped and twisted, hanging in wrong, wrong positions. He saw it all.

"Iruka..." Mizuki breathed. "I wondered... when you'd show up."

Iruka squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Mizuki..."

He could hear how tired his friend was, how exhausted and beaten and battered even his tone sounded. His voice was hoarse, strained. Screaming and shouting had done that to him. Torture had done that to him.

"You shouldn't be here," Iruka said, eyes opening to no more than slits. He could still barely look at him.

Mizuki blinked slowly. "Where else... should I be? Escaped? In the ground?"

Iruka bowed his head. "I don't know. But you shouldn't be _here_, not like this."

"Oh..." he realised slowly, "you mean... the bruises... and the blood."

Iruka looked at him again, eyes more open now.

Beneath all the blood dripping from his cuts and the bruises covering his torso and his arms hanging uselessly at his sides and his fingers contorted at wrong angles, Mizuki was still there. At another time, he'd probably be laughing at his own predicament. In another prison, he'd probably chalk his cheer up to adrenalin and the Will of Fire. In another village, Iruka would still be able to tell it was all bullshit. The attitude was just a front, because underneath all the blood and the bruises and the broken bones, Mizuki was still scared.

_But this isn't Mizuki._

His eyes opened fully. Iruka moved closer to him.

"Why?"

Mizuki looked back at him. "The scroll or the jinchuuriki?"

Iruka's face hardened. "Both."

Mizuki shook his head. "No."

"What do you have to lose by talking?"

"Nothing."

"Then why?"

"Because you have... everything to gain."

Iruka stepped back. "So you're keeping it from us because you can."

"You haven't seen... any Yamanaka, have you?"

Iruka nearly stiffened. "You were planning this."

"Of course."

"But why?"

"Do I need... a reason?"

"'Do I need a reason?'" Iruka echoed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Mizuki smirked. "There it is."

Iruka did stiffen this time.

"You never were too... good with the facade, Iruka," Mizuki said, almost casually. "You always had trouble putting... on an act. I never did."

Iruka stepped closer, leaning forward slightly. "Infiltration was your speciality."

"And distraction was... yours."

Iruka closed his eyes for a moment. "You slipped in while I kept them busy. It was how we operated."

"We were... a good team, weren't we?"

Iruka nodded. "Yeah, we were. What happened to that?"

Mizuki smiled sadly. "Kasumi."

Memories flooded back.

* * *

_A piece of paper slid over the desk. "Just a routine border patrol, Iruka. Nothing worth worrying about." _

_A week of inactivity in the north. _

_Three shinobi moved through the trees._

_"Mizuki, keep a low profile at the rear. Kasumi, you're on point."_

_A simple mistake._

_Kunai lanced through air and leaves._

_"Iruka!"_

_Mizuki slammed into his side, knocking him out of the way as shuriken followed his first dodge._

_"Get ready, Kasumi!"_

_Battle followed. Quick, precise, they dealt with the first two missing-nin from Iwa. Kasumi felled one. He took the other._

_"Mizuki, you got the last one?"_

_"He's down, but I think there was a f-"_

_Spears of earth cut him off._

_Fast movement ensued._

_Mizuki returned. "Got him. Is everyone... okay..."_

_"Kasumi?"_

_"I think... I didn't... move...in time..."_

_She collapsed, stone spear through her chest._

_"Kasumi!"_

_Rushing. Leaves. Konoha was in the distance_

_"Hold on, we're almost there!"_

_"I'm... sorry, Iruka. I let... I let you down."_

_"Kasumi, you didn't. You didn't. You're going to be fine, Kasumi. You're going to be alright."_

_She smiled up at him, her beauty obscured by misery. "I'm... sorry, Iruka. I'm so..."_

_She didn't make it._

* * *

"Yeah," Iruka murmured, little more than a whisper. "Kasumi."

He looked at Mizuki, gazed down at tired eyes with the same. He couldn't deny it anymore: this was Mizuki. He couldn't change that, couldn't convince himself otherwise. As much as he wanted to push the reality away, Mizuki was here, beaten, bleeding, broken and restrained.

"You still... can't fool me, Iruka," Mizuki said with a slight chuckle. "Denial was never your... strong suit."

Iruka held his eyes steady on him. "No, but it's never been yours either."

Mizuki's face went impassive.

Iruka held back a smirk. "There it is."

Mizuki snorted. "Ironic."

"Then tell me," Iruka urged.

Slumping back slightly, Mizuki closed his eyes and breathed slowly. "I'm dead anyway. Nothing to lose now."

Iruka crouched closer to Mizuki and frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Mizuki opened his eyes and focused them dead-on with Iruka's. "Orders."

"What?"

"I'm not going to repeat myself," Mizuki said, "so listen: this... had to be done. You might not understand it now, but you... will. Ask the Hokage."

Iruka leant in closer. "Ask him what?"

Mizuki's blank expression fell away. His sudden smile was sad.

"About the _game_," he whispered.

The word sent a chill down his spine.

Mizuki sighed. "Our time's up."

Two knocks on the door confirmed it.

Iruka walked out, but not before he spared one glance over his shoulder, for his friend. Iruka closed his eyes.

Door firmly shut between them, Mizuki closed his eyes as well and sighed. "My time's up."

* * *

"Get anything out of him?" Anko asked eagerly, kunai looping quickly around her finger.

Iruka frowned for a moment. "Nothing definite. He just mentioned something about a _game_."

"He equated stealing a valuable village artefact and attempting to murder our jinchuuriki to a game? Insane asshole," Anko muttered.

Iruka shook his head. "It doesn't seem like that to me. It's too... vague."

"Like he was trying to give you a clue?" Anko extrapolated.

"Yeah," Iruka nodded. "This all seems too purposeful."

_So, he's getting that, too,_ Anko thought.

Yugao had been right about that strange feeling to this whole thing. Something hadn't been right about this from the get-go, but this nearly confirmed it. That feeling of something larger at work permeated this whole thing, right down to the traitor sitting in Room Three resisting her interrogation attempts but handing such vague information to his old teammate after five minutes.

"This was planned, wasn't it?" Anko asked suddenly.

Iruka nodded again. "He said as much."

"We should get in there," Anko said before she turned to the guard. "Open the door."

The guard complied, disengaging the locks and seals before he pulled the heavy barrier open with a grunt.

"What the-"

Mizuki was thrashing in his chair, desperately pulling away at his restraints, mouthing words like he was trying to shout something as he clutched for his left arm behind his back. Before he could make a noise, he slumped forward in his seat.

Anko rushed forward and smashed her hand against the cuffs, funnelling chakra into the seal and letting Mizuki loose. He collapsed to the floor, unmoving.

"Mizuki!" Iruka shouted as he appeared at his side. "Someone, get help!"

The guard ran off, footsteps resonating down the corridor.

Anko turned him over, moving Mizuki into the covering position as she checked his pulse. She blinked once, and then tried again. There was nothing at his neck, nothing at his wrists. There was nothing at all.

"Fuck, I can't find anything. Iruka, take over."

He moved closer, she checked outside the door. The guard came running down the hallway with their on-hand medic in tow.

"I think he's having some kind of heart attack," she yelled with a wave. "In here!"

The doctor sprinted inside.

"Please, help him," she heard Iruka urge.

Anko stepped back inside.

The doctor leant over Mizuki's battered body, a green glow enveloping the woman's moving hands as they roamed quickly over the man's ruined, bloody, blackened chest.

"Damn it. This doesn't look good," the medic muttered under her breath.

Iruka stood up, a hand covering his mouth as he held back something like tears. Anko moved to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He was a traitor, but this chuunin was still his friend.

They watched for another excruciating minute as the doctor pushed chakra into Mizuki, scanning, probing, looking for some way to the fix the problem. But it didn't look good.

The glow around the doctor's hands faded. "I'm sorry. He didn't make it."

Iruka stepped back and whispered something to himself.

Anko was the only who heard it.

_"She didn't make it either."_

* * *

The Hokage placed folded hands beneath his grey beard, chin resting over his fingers over his desk. "I see."

Iruka had recovered his breath and was trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism, but the Sandaime could see through his firm exterior like a window of cracked glass. It was clear, yet so very indistinct.

So was the entire situation.

"This is... troubling," the Hokage said after some time.

Iruka sighed, eyes cast down to the well-trodden boards. "That's putting it lightly, Hokage-sama."

The chuunin looked back up to him slowly. "I just... don't understand this. There's something bigger behind this – there has to be – and I have no idea where to start in figuring it all out. So little of it makes sense to me."

He watched Iruka's facial expression, his posture and his general body language carefully. There was a mixture of sadness, anger and disbelief playing out across his features, his slumped, dejected shoulders and his clenching and unclenching fists. In the far too jaded mind of the Hokage, he saw a man on the edge.

This was a delicate moment. Iruka needed a push. It fell to the Hokage to choose the direction in which he would move.

The old man sighed softly.

Too many times had he sat in this office, behind the desk and in the robes that granted him the authority to _decide_, to _choose_ the course that lives took, and been forced to make those decisions, those terrible choices. Too many lives had been in his hands for such brief moments, where words could make a man into something great, or break him beyond all hope of repair.

Power, authority, command – these were terrible things. So many sought them, so many craved them, but too few saw what they did, what they wrought in the wrong hands, or even the terror they could bring when wielded by the right ones. Power was a burden, not a blessing.

It fell to him to use it.

_It is simply a question of how – which path must Iruka walk from here?_

It left him with two options: explain, or deny knowledge.

As Hokage, it was well within his grasp to do either. He could give Iruka the information he needed to hear, or he could say he knew nothing of whatever bigger plan was at work behind Mizuki's own machinations. He could relay the truth, or he could label the information classified, out of Iruka's reach.

_Such is the pain of choice._

Silencing seals already active, he decided.

Reaching a hand under his desk, the Hokage placed two fingers against a seal inked into the old wood many years ago, back in the days of Senju Hashirama and the inception of Konoha itself. The seal itself was of an old design, a highly secure storage seal taken along with dozens of other designs from the fabled subterranean libraries of Uzushiogakure when Uzumaki Mito first took residence in Konoha. It was ancient, as ancient as the scroll sealed within.

A pulse of his chakra saw a large scroll fall into his waiting palm. He placed it before him on the desk.

Iruka blinked.

"Does this scroll look familiar, Iruka-kun?" the Hokage asked.

The man stepped closer to the desk and examined it carefully. "It looks like the Scroll of Sealing, but... older. Does that mean..."

The Hokage confirmed with a nod. "What you saw Naruto-kun carrying was not the Scroll of Sealing. What he took was one of the older copies of the Kage Bunshin technique made to look like this scroll."

"It was a decoy?" Iruka wondered aloud. Then realisation swept over him. "Hokage-sama, you knew about this?"

"I was aware, yes," he verified.

Iruka's eyes went wide. "Then why didn't you stop this?"

The Hokage paused. Delicate phrasing was needed here.

"If I stepped in beyond the regular boundaries, I would have revealed that I knew about this plot from the beginning," he explained. "Doing so would have put far more of my shinobi at risk."

Iruka's face hardened for a moment, but quickly softened in understanding. "Yes, Hokage-sama, but..."

"You need details, I know," the Hokage interrupted with a raise of his hand. "There is a long tale I could tell, but I will boil it down to the basics. The night the Kyuubi attacked the village was the same night Naruto became a jinchuuriki. Some felt he would be more useful to the village as a weapon. I disagreed. I attempted to give him as normal a life as I could, but my efforts were not enough, and I will regret that until the end of my days. Despite my feelings, the insistence that Naruto enter the Academy eventually won out."

"You didn't want Naruto to become a ninja?" Iruka asked with an eyebrow raised.

The Hokage nodded slowly. "As I said, I wanted a peaceful life for him. It was the least I could do, given what he carries in our stead."

"So, this plot is about him, I take it," Iruka said.

"Yes," the Hokage resumed. "Given the prejudices against him and my lack of ability to remove them without violating my own law, certain insurances to assure that he graduated were put in place some time ago. Some of them I was... not aware of until quite recently."

"And Mizuki was one of them," Iruka muttered, bowing his head.

"I am sorry, Iruka," the Hokage said, bowing his own head. "As degrading as it may seem, and as disrespectful to his memory as it is, Mizuki was a pawn, a single piece to be manoeuvred in a much larger scheme. Eventually, he would have been discarded. Perhaps it is better that it happened sooner rather than later."

Iruka didn't look up. "I just... I still can't believe he's gone, and for what? What did his death accomplish?"

"It will be of little condolence to you, Iruka," the Hokage said, "but this was... necessary."

"'Necessary'?" Iruka echoed loudly, his tone nearing a shout as he looked up with sharp eyes. "Please, Hokage-sama, tell me just how the death of my best friend was in any way _necessary_."

The Hokage stood and lowered his voice. "Iruka."

The younger man stood to attention, back straight, legs stiff, and arms at his sides. "Yes, Hokage-sama."

The older man sat back down, his voice remaining in the same commanding state. "Jinchuuriki have been essential to the shinobi system since the Shodai Hokage distributed the bijuu among the Five Great Villages. The jinchuuriki are what keep the balance, and it is the presence of the Kyuubi that has helped to keep Konoha dominant."

His voice returned to normal, the tone of the grandfather. "At ease, Iruka."

"Hokage-sama, I apologise for my insubordinate behaviour," Iruka said stiffly, bowing low.

The Hokage sighed. "It's alright, Iruka-kun. I understand."

Iruka loosened himself and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Hokage-sama, but I still have trouble understanding this. What makes the jinchuuriki so important now? I thought we were in a state of disarmament."

"For now," the Hokage remarked. "Suna's jinchuuriki is widely noted as a genin with an impeccable mission record. Kumo's two are jounin, the older of the two quickly approaching the threshold of the five Kage's power. One of Kiri's is Mizukage himself. Taki's jinchuuriki has defended their village for years. Iwa's have been held in reserve for some time, simply waiting on the go-ahead from the Tsuchikage to unleash hell on whatever he sets within their sights."

The Hokage paused. "So I ask you this: where is our jinchuuriki?"

Iruka blinked a few times, his eyes almost watery. "I... understand, Hokage-sama. I just... I just wish it hadn't come to this."

The Hokage sighed once more. "At the very least, Mizuki is no longer a pawn in someone else's game. He is no longer a tool."

"I... I suppose he can rest now," Iruka nodded slowly.

The concoction of sadness and anger resurfaced on Iruka's face, regret and rage swirling in the eyes of the crestfallen. He had seen this day play out so many times across so many eyes and faces, the same kinds of emotional distress staring him down with unabated hate or resigned misery. The knowledge he could nothing to stop it repeating made each time as painful as the last.

"If you don't mind, Hokage-sama, I will take my leave now," Iruka mumbled, turning for the door.

"Iruka?"

The man glanced over his shoulder.

_Time for the push._

"Konoha lies in forest. The village is the tree at its centre, and we are the leaves," he recited.

Iruka turned fully and smiled somewhat. "Senju Hashirama's own words."

The Hokage nodded. "Yes, but what he did not mention was the roots. Deep in the shadows, they support the tree from beneath."

Iruka blinked once in thought before he spoke. "Yet rot in the roots can bring down the tree."

The old man chose his next words carefully. "Look closely, then cut it away."

Iruka nodded slowly and left without another word. The door closed behind him.

Looking down, Sarutobi Hiruzen opened his top left-hand drawer, pulled out his weathered pipe, stuffed whatever tobacco was next to it inside and lit it up with a tiny spark of Katon chakra. He took a long drag from his old friend. Smoke coiled in aged lungs.

It was a habit he had never quite kicked. It did his health little good in the long run, but it was one of the few distractions that had kept him sane so long. No one could weather the world alone forever, nor could he withstand the burden of power the same way. They all needed something to rely on, an escape, however damaging it was. But then there were those who threw themselves headfirst into the abyss. They were the ones who used the darkness of the world itself as an escape.

He released his held smoke in a practiced ring, watching it billow neatly and lose shape and form as it expanded into nothingness.

Toji Mizuki had been taken in exchange for readying their jinchuuriki for the world. He had given Iruka the push he needed, in the direction that would take him to the one responsible for the death of his friend and teammate.

_But at what cost?_

That question would not be answered for some time, perhaps not for years to come. But it would be answered in the end. As much as it pained his old heart, the answer was a simple one: Umino Iruka.

He shook his head in slow, unhurried motions and sighed quietly.

"Damn you, Danzo. Damn you."

* * *

_Well, that's something._

_Anyway, leave your thoughts or what-not. Reviews and things are helpful._

_I'm tired now. Goodnight._

_With greats yawns and greater stretches of arms,_

_A238_


	4. 3: Teams

Chapter 3: Teams

* * *

"This class of genin aren't all that much to look at, are they?"

Hatake Kakashi flipped to the next page, holding back a snort at his colleague's comment. "You know reports and grades can only tell you so much about an individual, Asuma."

"And what they've told me so far seems pretty accurate," the bearded man fired back across the table with a puff of cigarette smoke.

Kakashi wrinkled his nose beneath his mask. He didn't mind Asuma's habit; he just didn't like the smell. Time spent with ninken often resulted in a stronger than average affinity for smells. It was useful for tracking, but not so much for day-to-day interactions with a casual nicotine addict.

Asuma stacked the Academy files in front of him and pushed them off to the side. "I've done some surveillance on this bunch. They've got potential, for sure, but I wouldn't call them prime shinobi material."

"You have the next generation of the Ino-Shika-Chou trio lined up," Kakashi noted absently, turning to the next page. "How can they not have potential?"

"Yeah," Asuma grumbled in agreement. "But still, a lazy strategist, a sensitive chubby kid and a bossy mindreader? These kids just aren't made of the same stuff as our generation was back in the day and all."

Kakashi flicked a page. "We were in the middle of a war. We needed to be strong to have even the smallest hope of survival."

Asuma raised an eyebrow. "And these kids _don't_ need that kind of strength, too?"

He turned another page. "This is peacetime."

Asuma took in a slow drag. "You and I both know there's no such thing. There's just war and not war. It'll happen to these kids someday as well."

"Hopefully it never comes to that," Kakashi said.

"Hope isn't worth shit in this world, Kakashi," Asuma nearly sighed. "We both know that."

Kakashi nodded.

Asuma paused for a moment before chuckling dryly. "Ha, look at the two of us, reminiscing and bellyaching about the good old days like a couple of miserable veterans."

Kakashi kept his exposed eye on his book. "We're not exactly young anymore."

Asuma just laughed. "Speak for yourself, going-grey-at-twelve."

"It's silver," Kakashi sighed, running a hand through his gravity-defying mop of hair. "It's always been silver."

"Ah," Asuma marvelled at the realisation. "So you've been an old man since birth. That certainly explains the porn, but it certainly doesn't explain Gai."

"What does explain Gai?" Kakashi asked with a shrug.

Asuma returned the motion with equal apathy. "One of the great mysteries of life, I suppose. Though it's not one I'm keen on uncovering anytime soon."

"Indeed," Kakashi agreed with a sagely nod.

"Hey, want to get drinks later?" Asuma asked with a fresh grin. "There's a new bar a couple of streets away from my place. Doesn't really look that good, but it means I won't have to spend much time stumbling home drunk as I normally do."

Kakashi didn't look up from his book. "I would, but I'm afraid I have some things to do in preparation for my team's test. Perhaps another time."

"Oh, like hell you do," Asuma chuckled. "You just want an excuse to read your porn."

"Well, I have fallen behind my monthly Icha Icha quota," Kakashi said, tapping a finger against his masked chin. "A quiet night at home curled up with a good book might be just enough to catch up."

Asuma snorted. "I've seen your apartment, Kakashi, and I'd hardly call that bachelor pad of yours a home. I'd hardly call it a bachelor pad either. When was the last time you even had some female company?"

Kakashi's eye closed in his usual form of a smile. "Speaking of female company..."

A dark-haired woman with piercing red eyes approached the pair, pulling out a chair next to the bearded one and slumping down into it with a huff.

"Something wrong, Kurenai?" Asuma asked.

Ringed crimson eyes snapped over to him. "Put that cigarette out and I'll tell you."

The cancer stick was in the ashtray before Kakashi could blink.

_I guess he does like her_, Kakashi noted. Asuma didn't put out a cigarette for just anyone.

"Well, everything was about ready for my team's test today when, all of a sudden, I was called into the Hokage's office," Kurenai began. "As it turns out, and despite my protests, I'm getting saddled with a fourth genin."

"A fourth," Asuma repeated. "Seriously? You're getting a fourth?"

Kakashi looked up from his porn.

"Yep," Kurenai nodded with a mock smile. "The rookie jounin has to deal with the irregularity in the system. Isn't that just great?"

Kakashi closed his book.

This was... odd, to say the least. Genin teams were nearly always assigned in threes. The only times he could think of when they weren't was when a jounin-sensei was incapacitated or killed, forcing genin to either act without a supervising jounin if they had enough experience or split up among other teams. It was an awkward situation that had seen many genin left to float between teams without any real sense of permanency or stability during the last war. But right from the start? This was certainly strange.

"Don't worry, Kurenai," Asuma reassured, giving the woman a friendly tap on the shoulder. "You're plenty skilled, more than enough to handle one extra brat."

"Thanks, Asuma," Kurenai said quietly, eyes darting down for a moment before she looked back up to him. "But this throws off the entire premise of Team 8. We're meant to be a tracking and reconnaissance unit, and this one doesn't seem to have any real talent for that. If anything, his skills are only for direct combat."

"Sounds like just what you might need," Kakashi chimed in. "If your recon team runs into trouble, a heavy hitter could definitely make things go a little smoother."

Asuma nodded in accordance. "He does have a point, Kurenai."

"Fine, you've convinced me," Kurenai sighed. "I suppose this Koan kid might not be that much of a hassle, anyway."

Kakashi stared straight at Kurenai. "Koan?"

"Yeah, that's his name," Kurenai nodded. "Why?"

Kakashi folded his arms over his chest. "If I remember correctly, he was supposed to be on Team 7."

Kurenai frowned. "That's odd."

"Definitely," Asuma agreed.

"Actually, that reminds me," Kurenai said suddenly. "Hokage-sama told me to give this to you, Kakashi."

She slid a sealed envelope across the table.

Asuma snorted quietly. "Since when do you play messenger for anyone, Kurenai?"

"Since Hokage-sama asked me, Asuma. Unlike you, I actually do what I'm told," Kurenai retorted neatly.

"Is that a crack about the whole Twelve Guardian Ninja thing?"

"And what if it is?"

The bickering between the totally not-involved couple faded into the background as Kakashi popped open the envelope and scanned it over quickly.

_Wait..._

He read it twice more, three times as he tried to find some kind of mistake. There had to be. But there was no mistaking it. It was all there, all in the Hokage's writing and stamped with his official seal. This was no mistake.

Kakashi sighed and stood up, shoving his book back into its pouch and balling the piece of paper up in his clenched fist. He started to walk off. The arguing screeched to a halt.

"Where are you going, Kakashi?" Asuma called out behind him as he made for the jounin HQ's doors.

"To see Hokage-sama about this," he said without turning, raising the crumpled sheet in his hand.

He left the building and entered a village just waking up. People were on the streets, starting their days, getting things to eat, meeting their friends and making noise.

Kakashi stared at the ground as he walked through it all.

_I failed you, Minato-sensei. I tried to keep him safe from this cursed way of life, but I failed you._

* * *

Naruto was not a fan of waking up. While he was a staunch advocate of mornings and sunshine, he despised what they did to his sleep-laden eyes. He hated it when blades of light slashed through his window and stabbed at his eyelids, prying and piercing until they found a way through the cracks of his eyelashes. And once they were in, the beaming daggers started poking and prodding and rooting around in the sliver of space between his eye and its lid until he stirred, shifting slightly in the sheets and making noise that only caused him to stir more. It was a chain reaction of dirty sunlight and crunchy linen that ended in an explosion of morning irritability and a carefully chosen string of curses and insults directed at that big bright bastard.

At the very least, that was his usual routine.

Somewhere between waking up and realising he was awake, Naruto discovered a hate to rival the sun in a grand total of zero-point-three seconds: he hated being tossed out of bed.

Naruto hit the back of his couch in the other room with a dull thud and a loud groan after skidding across his wooden floors with a stirring moan and a waking grunt. His apartment spun around him violently, complete with the sandaled feet of an intruder.

"Oh, what the hell just happened?" he asked, expecting no answer to reach him as he closed his eyes, clutching and cradling his aching head and burning face respectively. The floor was not kind to those who dared plant face upon it.

"You overslept."

Naruto's eyes snapped open, ocean-blue narrowing like blades of water. "So you throw me out of my bed?"

An awkward shrug followed. "You're a heavy sleeper. Heavy problems call for heavy solutions."

"And you thought that forcing my face into the floor was your best option?"

"It was better than tossing you out the window. Or do you disagree?"

Somehow, as Naruto clambered to his feet in an attempt to stare at the intruder on more equal terms, he got the feeling that Koan wouldn't have had much of a problem with that.

"I thought so," Koan said with a half-smile at his lack of response. Naruto wasn't sure whether to interpret his expression as a smirk or a grin.

_Probably a bit of both, _Naruto frowned internally but shook his head. Something else struck him as weird in this already bizarre state of affairs.

"Why are you so talkative all of a sudden?" he asked, scratching the back of his head and neck to satisfy an itch and his burgeoning curiosity. "And how did you even get in here? Actually, how did I get here?"

"I never left, and I brought you here when you fell asleep," Koan answered. Naruto didn't miss the dodging of his first question.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "How long did we talk for?"

"A while," Koan said briefly.

"How long's 'a while'?

"The sun was coming up."

"Sounds like a while."

"Yes."

"... I'm annoying you again, aren't I?"

"Is there a point in asking a question you already know the answer to?"

Naruto sighed. "Oh, whatever."

Stretching out the kinks in his back from the unwelcomed adventure across the floorboards, Naruto couldn't help but notice the absence of a ripped shirt and orange jacket from the previous night's conflict. He also didn't feel a bandage where one should've been.

Naruto looked down at his bare torso. His eyes widened.

It wasn't just the bandage that was gone; there was nothing there at all. There wasn't a cut, a nick, a scar or anything. The entire wound that had dug a chunk of flesh out of his side had vanished into thin air. Or thin skin, in this case.

He poked a finger cautiously at smooth, hairless skin. It felt just like the rest of him – fleshy. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it other than the severe lack of kunai puncture that he knew had been there the night before.

Naruto shot an uncertain gaze Koan's way. "Uh, is this one of those... uh...?"

Koan nodded. "Rapid healing."

"Right," Naruto mumbled, still oddly unsettled.

He had realised long ago that he possessed a great deal of stamina and tolerance for pain, along with a decent rate of recovery for strained muscles and the occasional broken finger, but this was kind of ridiculous. A wound that large gone in a matter of hours? He supposed there was some use in that.

_But, damn, that's weird,_ he thought almost worriedly. Then something else occurred to him. "Wait a second, where'd the bandage go? More importantly, where did my t-shirt and jacket go?"

Koan held up two fingers. "One: bandage's useless. Two: t-shirt's in tatters."

"But where's my jacket?" Naruto asked.

Koan pointed into the other room, back to his bed.

"Oh, come on," Naruto groaned.

His favourite jacket was pretty much ruined. The rip and tear in the rather tough fabric wasn't too bad. The blood had dried in a massive red spot across the lower left-hand side, staining orange something it really shouldn't have mixed with. He was definitely capable of washing his clothes, but he didn't know if he could get that out with all the elbow grease and detergent in the world.

"Shame," Koan offered his condolences with a single word from the doorway.

Naruto sighed long and hard, forcing the air out of his mouth with puffed cheeks. "I'll miss this jacket."

Placing his wounded friend back on his bed, Naruto went to the small closet opposite to withdraw a spare black t-shirt and some brown shorts. Orange shorts without his jacket just wasn't him, he decided as he fastened his weapons holster from pair of pants to pair of pants.

As he reached at the last for the goggles on his nightstand, right next to his alarm clock, he paused. He didn't need those anymore.

He turned around and walked to the small chest of drawers on the other side of his bed, just below the window. The still-gleaming hitai-ate was waiting for him. Naruto smiled a little as he tied it firmly around his forehead.

Changed and geared, Naruto pulled on his blue sandals and went back to Koan waiting in the living-room-slash- kitchen-space.

"Well, I'm dressed now," Naruto said, gesturing to his state of clothing with little ceremony. "What time is it?"

Koan glanced across at the clock on the wall. "Nine-fifty."

_Why does it sound like I'm about to be late for-_

"Team assignment is at ten. We should go."

Naruto stared at him for a moment. "How did you even..."

"Practice. Lots and lots of practice," Koan replied with that same half-smile.

_Okay, that's definitely a smirk._

"You bastard."

"Hell if I know," Koan shrugged awkwardly. "Come on."

He stepped through what passed for a living room and towards the still-open window, perching himself on the sill.

Koan shot him a stare when he didn't immediately follow. "Well? Are you going to stand there or are you going to get yourself a team?"

"Fine, I'm coming," Naruto groaned as he made his way to the window. "And I still think you're a bastard."

"So you've said," Koan smirked, dropping from the window.

Naruto shook his head and sighed. "What the hell am I doing hanging around this guy?"

His eyes widened partially as he recalled the answer. "Oh, yeah. _That_."

Naruto shrugged to no one in particular and leapt out of his window.

* * *

Koan walked into the room quietly, just like he always did. The classroom contained familiar people, just like it always did. The difference was that Iruka wasn't there far before he was.

Walking up the rows unnoticed to his traditional corner, Koan settled himself away from the others and watched.

It was strange to not see their teacher at the front of the room before a single person had entered, strange not to see him pointing at something on the blackboard or launching into a lecture on the importance of punctuality when someone arrived late with some stuttered, facile excuse leaking out of their open mouth as Iruka schooled them with words. It was... different.

He didn't like it.

He shook his head, turning his sight towards the others. Nearly all of them were there, except Naruto. They were... familiar. He liked familiarity. It was comfortable. It was easy. Perhaps it was too easy at times, but that was the risk anyone ran spending any stretch of time in a single setting, a relatively unchanging environment.

The classroom had always felt somewhat stagnant to him, frozen in a specific feeling and a specific time. Maybe it was something to do with the slightly outdated material taught, or the exceptionally uniform manner of techniques they were expected to perform.

He understood the reasons behind the basic three jutsu perfectly. They were useful, vital to a shinobi's survival. But no ninja was exactly the same. Speciality existed for a reason. Why the Academy sought not to build more on the foundations it created, he didn't know. Yet again, perhaps that was the reason genin teams were guided by an experienced jounin, someone who could help in the areas the Academy couldn't, or wouldn't.

He looked down at the people around him.

Each and every one of them had a different set of skills. There were some overlaps as far as he could tell, but that was to be expected. They all started from the same place: the Academy.

_On second thought, no, they don't._

Clans – that was what made them stand out. It was their heritage that centred them in his view. There were those in the room he wasn't concerned with, civilian-born graduates that wouldn't make it in a shinobi life but tried anyway. His focus was on the clan-born.

He had spent quite some time watching them over the years. He had spent quite some time watching people in general over the years. It was where he began. Watching was one of the first things he knew. He liked to think he was a capable observer, able to discern things about people with relative speed. It came from practiced necessity far more than a hobby or a talent. It always felt... forced to him.

But he did it anyway.

His gaze switched from the room to an individual, someone who shared the same back row as he did, but on the other side of the room: Hyuuga Hinata.

She was small, petite, and almost always wore a bulky beige jacket. She had short, dark blue hair, a soft face and extremely pale eyes without a discernible pupil – the Byakugan, the famed eyes of the Hyuuga. They guarded the secrets of their bloodline jealously, but some things about their eyes were common knowledge. Her doujutsu allowed her a range of vision far beyond the norm, three hundred and sixty degrees all around her. Combined with the ability to see chakra and through solid objects, it was a formidable kekkei genkai. The clan's taijutsu style, Jyuuken, was similarly powerful, using targeted injections of chakra to damage internal organs and close tenketsu around the body with ease.

But despite the clan's notorious pride in both blood and skill, Hinata was shy. She stuttered when she spoke, and she never spoke out of turn. She kept her head down, her hands close together and her eyes to the ground. She lacked confidence, suffered from low self-esteem. Yet she was the heir to a prideful clan. He could only imagine the difficulty she faced with her family. It all made her reluctant to harm, to fight.

But she had potential. He'd seen it.

The noise in the room picked up, the ambient sound of mindless chatter resonating off the wooden walls and the boards lowered over concrete. The space was not designed well, too tall and wide and full of things angled at all the wrong places and made from all the wrong materials. The acoustics were horrible. It was difficult to pick out an individual voice from amongst the building cacophony. He knew for sure who wasn't among it, though.

Sitting a row down from Hinata, a male, tall for his age, sat quietly in sunglasses and a faded green jacket, a high collar hiding his mouth from view but leaving his brown bushy hair and upper face exposed. Aburame Shino did not say much. He was not shy or timid like Hinata. He was stoic and rigid, straight-backed to a fault, but it wasn't pride or arrogance that held him upright. It was the culture of logic and thorough rationality entrenched so deeply in the collective mind of the Aburame.

From what Koan knew, the clan was taught to place knowledge and intellect above emotion, right from birth. It made them calm, calculating shinobi. And it made Shino quiet. He observed, analysed before he spoke, if he spoke at all. Words were not always necessary for the Aburame. To the best of his recollection, the clansmen hosted breeds of specialised insects within their bodies that feed off them and their chakra from the day they were born. It was a symbiotic bond that allowed the Aburame use of the insects' many abilities at will, sometimes with the benefit of wordless communication between host and carried species. It also made them misunderstood. A human containing something foreign was often mistrusted, kept at a distance. He understood that.

In summary, Shino was efficient, capable, intelligent, and a promising shinobi.

Koan shifted his view towards the door. _He should be here by now._

Colliding right on time with his thought, Naruto walked in, something of a smile on his face.

Koan's gaze sharpened.

A boy with long brown hair tied in a ponytail of spikes lifted his head from a desk, two lines up the five rows. "Naruto?"

Naruto grinned and tapped at his hitai-ate. "Yep, Shikamaru, I graduated."

"How?" he asked with one lazily raised eyebrow.

"Because I'm awesome that way," Naruto answered, not missing a beat.

Shikamaru just mumbled his favourite word as he laid his head back down on the desk. "Troublesome."

Koan shook his head. Nara Shikamaru was intelligent, extremely so, but his tremendous intellect was burdened by an equally extreme lack of enthusiasm. In short, he was a genius – just a very, very lazy one. He had easily seen through Naruto's deflection of his inquiry but hadn't even bothered to pursue, playing it down as simply too _troublesome_.

And, apparently, most of the Nara clan was just as unmotivated. He could scarcely imagine a clan full of eminent tacticians, accomplished med-nin and expert assassins being so thoroughly _lax_. But however passive and apathetic they were, the clan's notorious techniques were undeniably effective. Through some form of chakra manipulation he wasn't familiar with, the Nara were able to control shadows. As far as he knew, this ability could be used to immobilise and restrain, or to physically harm and kill. It sounded quite interesting.

Too bad Shikamaru didn't seem to be all that interested in it himself.

The same could be said in part for the large boy sitting next to the Nara, munching away at a bag of chips like he always did. Brown hair sticking out from either side of his unusual hitai-ate, his face was marked on each cheek with a red swirl. Facial tattoos were a common sight in the Akimichi clan. Akimichi Chouji was a rather robust fellow, but a bit on the... heavy side, to put it delicately. From day one, he'd been sensitive about his size. Any cracks at it earned his wrath in equal measure. Like his close friend, Shikamaru, it was difficult to get him motivated or moving, but once an Akimichi gained momentum, weight became essential to their bone-crushing techniques.

The Akimichi clan had the ability to convert calories into chakra at a very high rate. Put together with their high levels of physical strength and size-altering ninjutsu, an Akimichi with enough weight at his back could be devastating on the battlefield. The downside to their body-expanding ninjutsu was high chakra consumption. Their naturally high reserves somewhat counteracted their techniques' drawbacks, but they needed to constantly eat to maintain sufficient chakra levels.

That explained Chouji's perpetual consumption of chips, but it didn't change the fact that he still found the noise of teeth constantly gnashing away at crunchy foodstuffs irritating.

Koan moved his eyes back to Naruto.

Stepping past another desk, a laugh made Naruto stop. "Something funny, Kiba?"

A boy with sharp, slitted eyes and wild brown hair wearing a fur-lined, hooded jacket with a white-furred dog sitting atop his head shook his head.

"Nah," he chuckled. "I just can't believe they let you graduate, _dobe_. The standards for genin must be slipping or something."

"I can't believe they let you inside. The smell alone should be reason enough to keep you out of the building," Naruto countered with a wily grin before he kept on moving up the line of desks.

Inuzuka Kiba grumbled.

It was typical conversation between Naruto and Kiba. It started with an insult, ended with a retort. Sometimes it went on for a few minutes. Others just ended in seconds. It all depended on who could smack the other down the hardest with words, though it had occasionally spilled over into taijutsu practice over the years. It was all about a clash of ego, the whole alpha-male mentality of the Inuzuka clan so heavily engrained in Kiba's mind he couldn't separate it from his associations with other males. Even though it may have been a strangely complex social issue between Kiba's clan and the rest of Konoha, Koan preferred to dismiss it as one big pissing contest.

Members of the Inuzuka clan tended to be far more animalistic than the average person. Just a glance at the red fang markings proudly displayed on their cheeks was enough to give that away. Below their immediate appearances, the Inuzuka acted much like a pack of canines would, appropriate considering that their main style of combat consisted of strong collaboration techniques with their partnered ninken. Beyond combat, the Inuzuka possessed very strong senses, particularly in smell. It made them adept in tracking via scents, ideal for searching large areas for individual targets.

Despite his fast-paced taijutsu and capacity for tracking, Kiba's behaviour suggested he would have trouble working in a team environment. The need to outdo others and prove his _dominance_ – Koan almost laughed at that – would be present in nearly everything he did.

_The Inuzuka really didn't think that one all the way through_, Koan thought, though there was probably something in there he hadn't considered. _Like a drive to protect the pack or something. I don't really know._

Koan shook his head free of irrelevant thoughts and continued down the list. _Ah, yes, the anomaly._

The number of clan heirs in the class had always pushed his sights to them specifically, forcing him to ignore the majority when he considered the group en masse. Considering the number of civilians he _knew_ would not last long as shinobi, it was, perhaps, to be expected. But among those civilians he had first dismissed was Haruno Sakura, a girl, oddly pink-haired, green-eyed and typically clad in a red dress over dark green shorts. She was something of an abnormality.

Civilians were not often successful as shinobi, or, at least, not for extended periods of time. It was simple mathematics given the proportion of Konoha's shinobi forces occupied by members of clans. But every now and again came along a number of civilians that went against the mould. The majority of those who succeeded in becoming shinobi remained unremarkable, genin and chuunin holding more permanent positions in administration or in the village-based defence divisions. Fewer among those were the ones who held potential. One of those was Haruno Sakura.

She was... mixed, in his opinion, when it came down to capabilities. She was intelligent, had very good information retention; she excelled in the more theoretical components of the Academy's curriculum. Physically, she was not as impressive. While she was accurate with shuriken and kunai, and familiar with the Academy-taught taijutsu to an excellent degree, she didn't have the physical strength or speed to make full use of it. Chakra-wise, her reserves were very, very small. D-rank techniques would tire her quickly; she would run dry when she needed her chakra most. What offset that was her uncommonly high level of chakra control. He remembered distinctly seeing her perform the basic three jutsu almost perfectly on her first go.

That was what made her an abnormality. A civilian with that natural level of chakra control, even when her reserves were negligible, was unheard of. But, there was a slight problem with her being a civilian: focus. Her reason for joining the Academy, for becoming a shinobi, was not... _ideal_.

Koan's eyes shifted from a head of long, unusually pink hair, to one with hair far shorter, far darker, spiked at the back. It neared black, though carried a hint of blue above a circular collar on a blue shirt, white shorts and blue sandals.

Uchiha Sasuke was the focus of Haruno Sakura and many other girls in the class, the object of a romantic fixation he didn't quite _get_. The more subtle complexities of it all eluded him, but he could still see that Sasuke ignored them, quietly rejecting attachment and substituting it with solitude. He was a loner, though it wasn't by choice.

A dead clan would force solitude on anyone.

The Uchiha clan, one of the two founding clans of Konoha, and Sasuke's family, were slaughtered in a single night by one of their own, a once-in-a-generation prodigy by the name of Uchiha Itachi, Sasuke's older brother. Koan understood the loneliness, the need for quiet. He left Sasuke be.

The girls didn't. They were attracted to him, something to do with his 'cool' attitude, how 'mysterious' and 'lonely' he appeared to be. It all seemed so shallow to him, so superficial and so utterly _external_.

But that was well beside the point. Despite Sasuke's... damage, he was skilled. He was the Rookie of the Year, highly proficient in taijutsu, capable of Katon ninjutsu in addition to the basic three, and very good with the usual weapons, thrown or otherwise. All of his abilities were enough to award him the designation of prodigy, genius.

Koan shook his head. Names wouldn't keep him alive in battle.

Then there was the last of the group he took note of.

She sat near to Chouji and Shikamaru, her uncovered shoulders uncharacteristically tense beneath the platinum-blond hair trailing down her upper back. As soon as his eyes fell on her, she turned slightly, enough for him to see green-blue glance towards him, one held beneath bangs that fell down the right side of her face, accentuated by the gleaming presence of the hitai-ate around her forehead. Turquoise orbs lanced into him, piercing the outer layer and seeing beneath for a painful instant. It was... agonising.

A moment later, Yamanaka Ino turned away.

Somewhere, in a dark and dusty corner of his mind, he was grateful.

There were things he didn't talk about, things he didn't like to think of. She was one of those, but there was no use in dredging up the past. It was behind him now.

His thoughts complete, Koan closed his eyes and waited.

"Are you trying to sleep or something?"

Koan didn't open his eyes. "No, Naruto."

He heard hands and fingers rustling through hair. "Then what are you doing?"

"Waiting," he answered.

Again, he heard Naruto scratch at his head. "For what?"

The door at the front of the room slid open. Koan's eyes did the same. "Him."

Iruka walked into the room holding a clipboard. Koan didn't care so much about the list of names and teams when he watched Iruka's movements for a moment.

His gait was slow, but not deliberately. He saw the strain in his legs, the slight lack of complete balance as he put one foot in front of the other because of the wound from last night. More than just that, Iruka was tired. The dark circles sitting under his eye attested to the validity of his theory.

But why did he look so... drained? It was as if the light had been siphoned from the man's eyes, the vaguely carefree glint that reflected from them at the right time of day gone on the wind. As intrigued as he was, the question would have to wait.

"Quiet, everyone, quiet," Iruka said in a firm voice.

The gathered genin kept on chattering away.

"Quiet!" Iruka shouted.

The noise dropped dead.

Iruka cleared his throat. "Alright, let's get this underway."

The team and names began to roll out of Iruka, constant and monotone. Koan paid little attention, not when he heard none of the usual variation, the minute differences in pitch and volume that accompanied Iruka's journey through words. His oration became... dry, exhausted.

More than just his body was tired. His mind, his spirit was dampened, weighed down by something. Familiarity told Koan as much as he observed with his eyes and ears.

Iruka cleared his throat before announcing the next team. "Team 7: Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke. Your sensei is Hatake Kakashi."

There was a sigh lower down the rows, issuing out of Sakura's mouth more as a light groan than a mere exhalation. She never had been particularly fond of Naruto.

Sasuke made no noise, made no sign of acknowledgement. He just stayed where he was, hands folded beneath his chin, dark eyes forward. He didn't seem to care.

Naruto blinked at first, smiled slightly before it faded away into a something of a scowl. As far as he remembered, Naruto was fond of Sakura, but less so of Sasuke.

Given a little bit of thought, Koan recalled the name of their assigned jounin. Hatake Kakashi's reputation preceded him, both as an accomplished shinobi in his own right and a student of the Yondaime Hokage. Team 7 seemed to be in good hands.

"Team 8," Iruka said. He paused, scratched at his head for a moment. "Odd, but never mind. Team 8: Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino, and Koan. Your sensei is Yuuhi Kurenai."

That was... unexpected. Four genin in a single team had not been his anticipation, nor had he anticipated an assignment to what sounded like a tracking unit. He was far more suited to combat than reconnaissance.

But Iruka went on. "Team 10: Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Chouji. Your sensei is Sarutobi Asuma."

Out of a reflex, one he had thought crushed, burnt and forgotten, he looked down the rows of desks. Towards _her_. When she looked back, even for just a moment, objective thought vanished like a desert mirage. Feelings... rose, like the tide at night. Emotions... returned with a vengeance. His heart thundered in his ears. The beat grew, accelerated, became something else again and again until there was a storm raging in his skull, booms of thunder and bells of iron ringing through the swelling clouds in his head, sound ricocheting off bone, metal grinding through grey matter and cutting its way down and through to what lay below the mountainous terrain of hellfire and brimstone and lava and-

_FUCK!_

On the outside, Koan looked away. On the inside, he tore himself away.

_Breathe. Breathe, you fucking idiot. Breathe before you actually get angry._

He took his own advice as Iruka resumed at the last.

"The jounin will be here in one hour to pick up their teams. That is all, genin. Do your village proud."

Koan shook his head, kept on breathing and made his way past Naruto without a second thought, moved down the rows without delay and was outside before he knew what to do with himself.

Outside, beyond the threshold of the Academy, he breathed a little easier. There was a little less dust, a smaller number of people. It was calmer. He needed that.

Leaping into the branches of a nearby tree, Koan waited for his team to filter out with the others, all the while trying to find his breath again.

* * *

"This change was rather abrupt, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said, standing before the wide desk of the man in the hat, the letter roughly squeezed in a gloved hand.

The Hokage bowed his head in brief acknowledgment. "I apologise for the lack of warning, Kakashi, but extenuating circumstances allowed for very little leeway."

_Extenuating circumstances? That sounds like total... wait._

Kakashi paused a moment to think it through, ignoring the irrational part of himself that demanded its voice be heard. "Does this have anything to do with the trouble out on one of the more distant training grounds last night?"

The Hokage nodded.

He couldn't help the sudden feeling of intrigue. "What happened?"

"Danzo," the Hokage answered quietly.

_Danzo? Then, that means..._

"I understand," Kakashi said almost immediately, his grip on the letter slackening greatly

The Hokage sighed. "Once again, I do apologise for the position this puts you in. I am very aware of your views on the matter."

His views were simple: he didn't want Naruto involved in any part of Konoha's military, least of all as a shinobi. Too much had been lost to it already. He couldn't lose the only link to the past he had the same way he lost everything else.

The Hokage had agreed with him wholeheartedly, but the Hokage's opinions and the Hokage's decisions could not be confused as one and the same. There came a time when need outweighed emotion. Decisions for the many had to be made in spite of the feelings of the few. Such was the burden of authority.

With an eye downturned to old wood he'd stared at too many times before, it was Kakashi's turn to sigh. "My opinion doesn't matter now, does it, Hokage-sama?"

The old man nodded once more, a grave expression passing over weathered features. "I am afraid so. Konoha can no longer afford to keep Naruto-kun away from this life."

Kakashi looked up the Hokage, an eye meeting two. "I didn't realise the situation was that dire."

"Nor did I, not until it was too late to act," the Hokage admitted in a sullen tone.

Despite himself, Kakashi nodded. "I suppose we'll just have to live with it, then."

No matter how he felt, duty to the village came first.

The Hokage's voice slid from one tone to another, the one reserved for private moments in a life filled with so little. It was the tone of an old man. It was the tone of the old man beneath the hat and the robes.

"I am truly sorry, Kakashi," the Hokage said softly. "This pains me as well."

He... hadn't thought about that. He was not the only one with something to lose in all of this.

"I know, Hokage-sama," Kakashi nodded. "I'll do my best."

Seeing the Hokage motion to the door with an approving nod, Kakashi left the office.

Standing from his chair and turning to face his village, the Hokage clasped his hands behind his back as he let loose a long, tired sigh.

"I sincerely hope our best is enough."

* * *

Naruto sat quietly as he watched Koan move swiftly from the room. _Why's he in such a hurry?_

It was probably best not to ask. As he'd discovered from the previous night of half-conversation, Koan did not divulge all that much about himself. If he responded, it was typically with short, sharp answers. If he didn't respond at all, Naruto could take that as a sign to move onto the next topic. He had yet to see Koan angry, but he had a feeling he didn't want to see it.

If what he had said about jinchuuriki was true – and he certainly had no reason to doubt him on it –, an angry one could be deadly. On the other hand, Koan had gotten him out of bed by throwing him out of it, and that had seemed like Koan's attempt at having fun.

_Weird..._

Either way, it would probably be best to just leave it alone. There were more pressing things at hand, anyway.

Like his team.

It was an odd thing in his mind. At one point, he probably would've rejoiced at having Haruno Sakura on his genin team. When he first arrived at the Academy, she'd been nice to him, her vivid green eyes so happy and her cute face so sunny and smiling. She was bright and funny and sweet and smart and a whole lot of other things, too.

It was more than enough for him to hope that she would be his friend. Then she found out who he was. Just like so many others, she no longer wanted to be around him.

Hope began to fade.

He kept watch over her for a time. He was happy to see her happy and smiling until she caught sight of him and she would duck out of view as quickly as she could. It pained him.

Hope dwindled a little more.

Eventually, she joined in the communal activity name calling could sometimes become. She would try and antagonise him just like the others would, try to get him angry so they could turn the teachers on him. They tried to make life that little bit more difficult for him.

Hope became cinders.

He kept trying, kept persisting in the few ways he could. He tried greeting her with a simple smile and a wave as she came into the classroom. He tried to talk to her as everyone started to make their ways home after class. He tried to get assigned to her in group projects. He tried to get partnered with her during taijutsu classes. He tried to help her however he could. But he was ignored, avoided, declined and rejected time after time.

He had his limits, and he felt the fire dim at the last.

That wasn't to say the fireplace had been cleaned, scrubbed down to the last splinter of charcoal. There was still a place for her somewhere in there. He would still be the first on his feet in times of need, still try to be there if he could be. Perhaps it would always be like that.

It just wasn't the roaring hearth it had once been.

Then there was the other guy on the team: Uchiha Sasuke.

At first glance, Naruto had dismissed him. He came across as nothing more than an overrated prick. He didn't really want anything to do with him. He didn't treat the people around him well, he ignored the swarms of girls that always seemed to be jockeying for his attention at every turn, and he looked down on pretty much everything in sight.

He just seemed like another A-grade asshole.

But there were reasons behind the curtain of condescension and dismissal. He was actually quite skilled, though Naruto would never admit that aloud. Sasuke had earned his place as Rookie of the Year. If he thought about it hard enough, Naruto could imagine the hordes of fan-girls being quite annoying if he was the centre of their world. And then there was the reason he didn't like to work with others or associate with people in general: his dead clan.

That needed very little explanation.

Beyond his dislike of the guy, he wasn't a bad teammate to have when it came down to a fight.

The one hitch in the plan, however, seemed to be the tiny little thing of them getting along in the slightest. Sakura didn't like him, but she very much liked Sasuke because every other girl liked Sasuke. Sasuke didn't really like anyone. Naruto didn't like Sasuke, but sort of liked Sakura. On the whole, there was generally just a lot of unreciprocated liking combined with a healthy dose of abhorrence for him specifically.

_This is not going to end well._

Absorbed by his thoughts, he missed the reason Sakura suddenly ran out of the mostly-empty room in tears. He figured it out a moment later when he looked down the unmanned rows.

On his feet without even realising it, Naruto stood over Sasuke barely three seconds later. "What the hell was that about, Sasuke?"

He said nothing, just stared at the front wall with a bored expression on his face.

Naruto was not in the mood to wait. "Well?"

"You're annoying, dobe. So is she," he answered with a grunt.

Naruto's face darkened. "And that's your reason for making her cry?"

He didn't answer. He just grunted again.

"We're supposed to be a team, teme," Naruto growled. "Making her cry doesn't help that one bit."

Sasuke scoffed. "Like I care."

It was such a typical response. He brushed everything off like it was nothing, keeping everything at a distance because he was so far above it all. The truth was he just didn't want to be hurt again. Looking at him long and hard enough, Naruto could see that well enough beneath Sasuke's cold facade.

"You should care," Naruto muttered as he walked to the door. He paused at the threshold to send Sasuke a withering glare. "You can't survive on your own forever."

The fight with Mizuki had taught him that lesson well enough.

Naruto stormed off to find Sakura.

* * *

He was... unsure.

Watching the three of them move from the entrance of the Academy to a nearby eating area, one they'd used for lunch breaks over the years, he wasn't certain on exactly what to do.

Social interaction had never been his strong point. Verbal silence was his preference. He didn't like mindless chatter or background noise generated by the human tongue. He liked ambience, the songs nature played. They were performed constantly, through everything and everywhere in a hundred thousand different ways in a hundred thousand variations. Every environment had its own song, its own players, singers and instruments.

He chuckled silently to himself.

Everything society tried to do was just a copy of the original.

_Huh... that actually makes sense._

If everything society was and ever would be was nothing more than a simple replication of nature, he already knew how to interact with it. He'd spent more than enough time watching and observing the patterns. Perhaps it wasn't that social interaction was not his strong point. Maybe he just never liked it in the first place.

No matter what his views were, it was... necessary. The only way up was through.

Koan dropped from his place in the branches without a noise and ambled over to them with his hands in his pockets. Shino, Kiba and Hinata were gathered silently, loudly and quietly around a table. One was listening, one was talking, and one was murmuring. To that combination he would not bring much more than another inaudible voice.

"Oh, so _now_ you decide to show up," Kiba greeted disdainfully as he approached, standing up to make a show of... _intimidation_?

A few metres away from them, Koan chuckled.

Kiba's brow furrowed. "Something funny?"

"Your attempt at looking threatening," Koan answered, lips twisting in a wry expression.

"What did you say?" Kiba growled, sliding a half-step forward.

His mouth dropped into a flat line. "You heard me."

The red marks on his face shortened and sharpened as Kiba bared his teeth. "Well, why don't you say it again, huh? Make me understand."

"You're insecure," Koan said.

"What?"

"Their presence doesn't threaten you," he said, glancing towards timid Hinata and impassive Shino. "Mine does."

Kiba was taken aback momentarily if the slight shift backwards of his feet was anything to go by, but he kept his sharp teeth showing and the clan markings on his face compressed. "What, you think I'm afraid of you or something?"

Koan shook his head. "No. It's just that your dumbass pack mentality tells you to be."

Kiba snarled gutturally, the same way his dog snarled a moment later. "What the hell do you know about a pack, Koan? What the hell do you know about a clan, huh?"

They didn't know anything about him, but Koan almost flinched. Dark eyes turned on the Inuzuka. "I know enough that I'm not going to tolerate your 'top dog' bullshit a moment longer, Kiba, because you're not."

"I'll bet you anything I'm stronger than you," Kiba growled once more.

Koan scoffed. "I don't need to engage in some useless pissing contest with you for a position that doesn't even exist."

More snarls rolled out of Kiba. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"This is a team," he said firmly.

"And what the fuck does that have to do with me?"

"Everything," Shino interjected, adjusting his shades as he stood to face them both.

Koan didn't show his slight surprise at the interruption.

Kiba stared. "Now you're against me, Shino? What the hell, man?"

"I am against neither of you," Shino corrected. "Koan-san is right in his thinking. This genin unit is meant to function as a team. Infighting at such an early stage will create nothing but avoidable conflict in the near future. I hereby advise you both to cease and desist in this pointless line of conversation to circumvent wholly preventable complications."

Koan blinked once before he nodded.

Kiba just stared, his jaw hanging slack. "I think... you said more just then than you did in the past six years combined."

Shino sat back down and returned to face Hinata without another word.

Kiba shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and slid onto the bench next to Shino.

Koan remained standing, focused on the ground.

_That was... uncomfortable._

The risk of argument was why he didn't like social interaction. He preferred nature. Nature didn't argue with him. It remained silent.

His gaze drew across to Hinata, just out of the corner of his eyes. Her head of dark blue hair was down, her fingers were woven nervously together, and her shoulders were just the slightest bit slumped. She didn't like fighting. And he brought it with him.

_This is the problem with four genin on a team._

One more voice changed the team's dynamic radically. One more body meant one more person for the jounin to watch out for. It was one more responsibility, one more potential liability, one more worry that no one else needed. It was why genin teams were made up of three genin.

Yet here he was.

Koan sighed inaudibly.

"W-would you l-like t-to sit down, K-Koan-san?"

Dark eyes shot to the right. Hinata shifted back, almost imperceptibly. But he saw it, saw the fledgling anxiety in the movement. She was nervous. He had no intention of startling her.

So he indulged her. Without another word, he took slow steps – predictable steps – around the table, past Kiba and Shino, and placed himself on the same side of the table, but some distance away from her. He nodded, a motion he hoped relayed appreciation of some kind.

Hinata looked up briefly, enough to see it. Recognition darted across her lips before she returned to her cautious posture. With her shoulders hunched, her head lowered slightly and her fingers poking together nervously, she looked... fragile.

_How strange._

A few moments of silence passed them by. It was only after those few did he recognise the next few as awkward. But then it wasn't.

Kiba began talking to Shino, quietly at first, but quickly becoming loud, animated with great gestures of his arms as he explained something passionately, something to do with the Inuzuka and their clan compound rife with canine life in all its shapes and sizes. Shino nodded and contributed something of his own, a somewhat clinical statement on the structure of the Aburame, the sort of logical hierarchy with which the clan functioned in a manner much akin to that of a hive, resembling their insects in some ways. Hinata offered a small, quiet token of the Hyuuga, a clan with long history and even longer traditions.

Then it fell to him.

Kiba looked at him expectantly. Shino gazed upon him with waiting impassivity. Hinata did not judge him with her eyes, but he still felt the weight of her hearing upon him, strange as it was.

"I'm not from a clan," he uttered simply.

"That we know," Shino said. "We wish to know of your family."

Koan looked down briefly. "I'm an orphan."

Shino nodded. "I apologise for the intrusion."

_How... strange._

Kiba, despite the simmering glint of resentment or rivalry still sweltering in his slitted eyes, rubbed the back of his neck with an awkward grin. "Yeah, that was kind of insensitive."

"I am... sorry, Koan-san," Hinata murmured, oddly without a stutter.

"It's alright," he managed after a moment. "It's not like I ever told anyone."

They all nodded in their own ways: rigidly, lively, and gently. But he doubted they understood.

Nature understood. The Hokage understood. Naruto understood.

The one within him understood.

_"Indeed, meat sack,"_ a deep, rolling voice said in his head.

Koan glanced up slightly. _You're always looking out for me, you damn dirty ape._

The ancient voice laughed slowly, a dry chuckle of immense proportions. _"Say whatever you need to, flesh bag. It changes nothing."_

_Right._

_"It changes nothing,"_ the voice repeated.

_Again, right._

A rumble quaked in the depths. _"It. Changes. Nothing."_

_... I'm annoying you, aren't I?_

_"Yes."_

_I'll leave you alone now._

_"Do."_

The voice faded into the recesses of his mind.

"Huh," he murmured. "So that's where I get that from."

Kiba frowned. "Get what from?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

Kiba relented with a quiet mutter. Conversation resumed. Koan said nothing.

But it was exactly what this thing wasn't. It was something. He just didn't know what yet.

* * *

It wasn't hard to track her. Her straight-line run did little to deter his efforts to follow. He doubted she was thinking about that now, though. No matter how incredibly intelligent Sakura could be, how encyclopaedic her mind truly was, it just seemed to shut down when emotion took hold of her.

Out on missions, that could be dangerous.

He found her crying softly on a bench nestled in a secluded corner of a secluded path. The rays of sun practically dripping through the trees above did little to distract him from Sakura's tears. He could see the slight tremors that ran along the gentle peaks of her drooping, dejected shoulders every few seconds as she stopped sobbing to just _breathe_. Clear in every way, she was struggling. She needed help.

Hands in his pockets, Naruto walked slowly towards her sobbing form.

"Sakura..." he began uncertainly.

She didn't look up from the ground. "What... what do you want, Naruto?"

Beneath the pink locks shadowing her face, Sakura's voice was strained, shaky. It didn't sound like her. He didn't like that.

"I just wanted to check on you," he said, shifting awkwardly on the spot. "See if you were al –"

"Do I look alright to you?" she snapped, reddened, tear-stricken eyes bearing down on him.

Naruto frowned. "Hey, I was just worried about you, Sakura."

"Like you... like you care," she mumbled out between more wracking sobs. "Like anyone cares."

The tears fell harder.

Naruto reached out a hand. "Sakura..."

It was slapped away before he could try and comfort her. "Don't touch me!"

His hand dropped to his side. "I'm... I'm sorry."

Naruto turned on his heel. "I'll leave you alone. Sorry for bothering you."

"Wait..."

He glanced back. She was looking up at him all of a sudden. Her red-green eyes lost judgement, lost sharpness. They became dull, incapable of cutting. It was like looking at edgeless knives. Then he remembered they were her eyes. They were Sakura's big, bright emerald eyes rimmed with dripping tears and puffy stains of red. They weren't dangerous.

An arm reached out towards him, pleading. "Don't go..."

He didn't.

Naruto sat down next to her on the bench. She leaned on his shoulder and cried.

He didn't say anything. He didn't try to do anything to comfort her beyond a light pat on the back. He didn't know what to say. He didn't have the words she needed to hear. But, as time passed them by, it seemed he didn't need to say anything. His presence had been enough.

Her tears slowed to a crawl as she looked up at him, something between embarrassment and shame trembling on her features. That faded to steady understanding when he didn't look at her with judging eyes.

Ever so slowly, words came drifting out of her.

At first, he wasn't sure what she was talking about. It began as quiet murmurs about harsh words fired at her by Sasuke. Then it was her shaky initial response to him cut off by the laughter from a handful of other girls. And then she was out the door, crying her eyes out on a bench somewhere nearby before he showed up.

After that... it was about her feelings. Within the space of a day, she already felt like a failure. He told her she wasn't. She quoted Sasuke word for word. He insisted he was wrong. She asked how he could possibly know.

"I don't."

She was surprised, perhaps a little shocked.

"Even if he's right _now_, you can prove him wrong."

All it would take was time and effort.

Beyond that, they didn't talk about anything in particular. It became casual, comfortable. It became friendly.

Sakura looked at him tentatively. "We're... we're friends, right, Naruto?"

Naruto glanced at her with a smile. "Yeah. We are."

_Friends..._

It sounded good to him.

* * *

After some moments and minutes of quiet conversing between the other three, filled with their respective styles of speech, someone approached. There was a sudden twitch in nearby leaves, an abrupt shudder that ran through the upper branches of the trees that circled the area at different points. Someone wanted them to look up.

Kiba did, for a moment. Shino remained still. He could not tell where exactly Hinata was looking. He threw his gaze to the space around him.

But there was nothing there. _Wait..._

Something felt... off.

Shino pushed his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose. "Genjutsu."

Three claps rang out from nowhere.

"Very good."

A woman melted out of air and into view.

He found her appearance... uncommon. She wore a series of bandages marked with what looked to be rose thorns over red mesh armour equipped with only the right sleeve, along with bandages around her hands and forearms. Black hair hung loosely down her shoulders, some make-up was on her lips and around her eyes, and her hitai-ate was tied firmly around her forehead, covering a sliver of fair skin.

She didn't look like a lot of other people.

"K-Kurenai-san," Hinata greeted with a small wave.

The woman smiled. "Hello, Hinata. Please, call me Kurenai-sensei."

Her unusual red eyes turned to the rest of them. "The same goes for all of you."

Two silent nods, Kiba's lopsided grin and a yip from Akamaru answered her.

"So," Kurenai began, leaning herself casually against the other bench. "It's very likely that you each know who each other are, however, I imagine the majority of you don't know who I am. I'll introduce myself, and to keep the theme going, you'll each introduce yourselves to the team. My name is Yuuhi Kurenai. I recently became a jounin, and I specialise in genjutsu. I like reading and studying a variety of subjects, experimenting with genjutsu, watching sunsets and spending time with my fellow jounin. I dislike those people that regard kunoichi as ineffective ninja and when teammates fight with each other. My current ambition is to make this team a success in every way I can."

Kiba almost jumped to his feet when Kurenai's eyes fell to him. "My name is Inuzuka Kiba, and this is my best friend in the whole wide world... Akamaru!"

He triumphantly raised his white-furred dog into the air, aloft for all to see. Akamaru just yawned and fell asleep in Kiba's hands.

Patting his sleeping canine on the head and putting him back in his jacket, Kiba grinned. "I like Akamaru, walking Akamaru, eating with Akamaru, Akamaru, and dried meats and things. I dislike stuck-up jerks, stuck-up assholes, stuck-up pricks, stuck-up-f –"

"I think we get the idea, Kiba," Kurenai cut him off at the pass.

Kiba blanched underneath the woman's surprisingly intimidating gaze. "Uh, right... anyway, my ambition is to be the best tracker and fighter in my whole clan... and maybe become Hokage, or Jounin Commander, or something like that. I'll figure it out when I get there."

Shino adjusted his sunglasses once more. "My name is Aburame Shino. I am fond of entomology. I dislike judgement passed without logical basis. My current goal is to develop my own techniques within the sphere of the Aburame. My long-term ambition is to lead my clan well."

Koan watched as Hinata leant into herself a little more. The sudden attention on her seemed to make her recoil. "My n-name is H-Hyuuga Hinata. I like k-kind people, p-people who encourage o-others. I dislike... c-conflict. My ambition is to g-grow strong e-enough to... to be recognised by... my father and... and by someone..."

Then Kurenai's unusual gaze turned to him. The others looked at him, too. He... wasn't used to it, but he cleared his throat with a quiet cough and pressed on nonetheless. "My name is Koan. I fight best at close to mid-range. The list of what I like is fairly short. The list of what I dislike is a lot longer. My goals, ambitions... don't have many, and I don't have any I care to mention right now. That's all I have to say."

He noticed a glance travel from Kiba to Shino and back. Beneath slouched shoulders, Hinata did not react. Leant casually on a table's edge, hands pressed lightly against the wood, Kurenai betrayed nothing.

He expected as much.

But he didn't expect that odd stare of Kurenai's to be so piercing. She gazed at him carefully, perfectly measured. It was practiced. She was weighing him up, stacking his words and his appearance in equally high piles against one another to see what added up and what didn't. And he was aware of the holes in his defence. They were tiny, damn near unseeable, but they were there. Kurenai could see them.

He didn't like that.

Her red-eyed watch snapped loose of him and swept over the others. "Well, now introductions are out of the way, what do you think this team will be focused on?"

"Tracking and reconnaissance," Shino answered immediately. "My insects may be employed in part for both. Kiba-san's enhanced sensory capacity and Hinata-san's Byakugan fit both respective roles equally, if not in a superior manner to my own."

As he finished, his head turned the slightest bit towards Koan.

Koan shifted his eyes down slightly. _Of course._

Kurenai nodded firmly. "Very good, Shino."

"Kurenai-sensei..." Hinata's shy voice interjected quietly into the air around them.

"Yes, Hinata?"

"Why d-do w-we have a f-fourth member?" she asked. "I thought g-genin teams were m-made of three genin a-and one jounin."

Kurenai nodded again. "Traditionally, they are. Three genin has been the standard format for a very long time. Only during times of active conflict with other villages are more than three genin assigned to a single jounin. There was a slight irregularity with this year's number of graduating genin, however, which forced a slight change to the usual procedure."

Hinata bowed her head in a nod and resumed her cautious, withdrawn posture.

"That in itself does bring up a good point," Kurenai continued. "Specialised teams can often suffer from a lack of diversity in regards to skills. If we're put in a position out in the field where our abilities may not suit the situation, a teammate with a different skill set can definitely help."

With that, she very casually gestured towards him.

That was... true. He hadn't given that much consideration, but she was right. He wasn't geared for tracking or scouting. He was made for combat, forged for direct engagement. That was his strong point.

"Now, talk amongst yourselves for a moment," Kurenai said, right before she motioned for him to follow.

She pulled away into the trees. He followed.

Koan had a feeling he already knew what this was about.

* * *

"Kami, what's taking this guy so long?" Naruto grumbled quietly.

No one took this long, least of all a jounin. They were meant to be elite ninja, the best of Konoha's best. At least, that was what he had gleaned from Sasuke's uncharacteristic mumblings to no one in particular.

Sakura leant back in her seat and sighed. "You'd think a jounin would know how to be on time."

Situated a desk away from him, Sakura proceeded to tap her fingers impatiently against the wood, a vague melody consuming her movement in a few moments.

They all had their own little idiosyncrasies, their small habits that dealt with boredom.

At first glances, Sakura liked to tap away at her desk in a slightly rhythmic fashion. Sasuke seemed to enjoy scowling at the world and grunting when he couldn't be bothered to answer. Naruto? Well, he liked to prank people.

The pranking urge hadn't grabbed at him in a while, so he didn't really have any decent materials on hand. But they were in a classroom...

Standing up quickly, Naruto moved to the front of the room to snatch an eraser from the base of the blackboard.

Sasuke perked up... or whatever passed for perking up when it came to him. "What are you doing now, dobe?"

Naruto scowled reflexively. "Just trying to pass the time, teme. You glare at everything. Sakura taps at her desk. I do this."

Sliding the door the tiniest bit ajar, Naruto jumped and quickly wedged the eraser into the gap. The moment the door was opened, the eraser would fall onto their head. It wasn't clever in the slightest. It was pretty stupid, actually. But he didn't care. It was something to pass the time with.

"That's not the smartest idea, Naruto," Sakura said with a pained expression.

Naruto nodded. "It's not meant to be clever. It's meant to tell our sensei we're annoyed."

"We could do that with words as well," she suggested.

Naruto shrugged as he returned to his seat. "Or we could do this. It doesn't make much difference to me."

Sakura just shook her head and sighed again. Naruto sat back down and waited.

And waited. _And waited._

It had been three hours already. _Three hours._ He could scarcely stand – or sit – to wait another second. Just as he was about to shout his disapproval of this guy's horrible sense of time and lack of punctuality, footsteps echoed in the hall.

Naruto waited a second longer.

The door slid open, an unfamiliar head of silver hair popped in and the eraser fell. A single exposed eye looked down at the ground, then back up at them.

The door slid open fully, and a silver-haired man in typical jounin gear – except for a mask covering most of his face and his hitai-ate slanted to shelter his left eye – stepped in to regard them with a bored yet analytical gaze.

"My first impression of all of you..." he began slowly, "... I hate all of you."

Sakura gaped slightly at him. Sasuke snorted quietly at him. Naruto just stared at him, unfortunately wide-eyed.

The man's eye closed and flipped upwards in a manner reminiscent of a smile... except with his eye. He pointed upwards with a gloved hand, thumb extended skyward. "Meet on the roof in five."

"Is that five seconds, minutes or hours?" Naruto asked.

The eye-smile didn't falter. "I'll give you all one guess."

"Hours?" Sakura chimed in.

Sasuke grunted.

"Minutes?" Naruto asked hopefully.

"And..." he drawled out, "... Blondie is the winner! See you all in five minutes on the roof."

His hands formed seals at a lightning pace and he was gone in a sudden swirl of leaves.

"That was mildly impressive," Naruto noted absently.

Sakura nodded. "But he was still three hours late. _Three hours late."_

Sasuke shook his head. "This guy seems like an idiot."

Naruto feigned slack-jawed astonishment, slapping his palms to his cheeks. "Sakura, he speaks! The Uchiha speaks!"

Sakura chuckled quietly. "Shocking, isn't it?"

Naruto shot her a wide grin. Sasuke scowled at nothing and everything and began to walk out.

He was starting to enjoy this whole 'friends' thing.

He and Sakura exited the classroom and quickly made their way up to the roof, Sasuke just a few steps ahead of them.

Naruto had spent some time up on the roof before. It was actually a small park lined with trees and benches oddly enough. Not many people knew about it, or if they did, not many actually stayed up there for prolonged periods of time. It had always been strangely empty when he'd been up there.

_Oh, yeah. _He kept forgetting about _that_.

The silver-haired man sat on the furthest railing, Sasuke, Sakura and himself taking a seat just opposite him on the ground and on nearby benches.

"So, how about we go around in a circle and introduce ourselves?" he asked them with another one of his odd eye-smiles. "Just give your name, likes, dislikes, goals and dreams, or something like that."

Sakura cocked her head to one side. "Can you start us off, sensei?"

"Okay," he nodded without opening his eye. "My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like some things, I dislike some things, I don't feel like sharing my goals, and I had a dream last night involving a talking tree and a cat that barked like a dog. It got really weird."

Sakura eyed Kakashi warily, Sasuke didn't seem to care, and Naruto nodded absentmindedly. _Yep. Sasuke was right on the money with this one._

Apparently, this guy was meant to be a jounin, an elite shinobi. Somehow, somewhere beneath all the weird-ass mannerisms and strange outward appearance, this guy had the skills and experience of a professional at the top of his field. Naruto had no small measure of difficulty believing that.

Kakashi pointed to him, still smiling with his eye. "Your turn, Blondie."

Naruto looked at him funny. "Okay... my name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like ramen. Ramen's pretty good. Though, when I say 'pretty good', I mean ramen is freaking amazing. I don't like the time it takes to prepare ramen, the proper stuff or the instant stuff. And as for my dream..."

Looking at the ground for a moment, Naruto trailed off mid-sentence.

He wasn't quite sure of that one anymore. The position of Hokage had been his goal for a very long time. His dream was to... be free. Yet again, he hadn't always known what that really meant. And now he wasn't sure what he was dreaming of being free from. The Kyuubi, perhaps?

_But then someone else has to shoulder my responsibility..._

He couldn't let that happen. It was his burden.

_Freedom can wait. Responsibility can't._

He looked back up at Kakashi, suddenly resolute. "My dream is to one day become Hokage."

Kakashi opened his eye to look at him fully, properly sizing him up before he gave him a slow, steady nod.

"And what about you, Pinkie?" Kakashi asked, turning to Sakura.

She offered him a gentle scowl at the nickname. "Right... my name is Haruno Sakura. I like..."

She paused, looked around a little. Naruto saw her glance hit Sasuke's face quickly, her eyes practically ricocheting off his when they suddenly snapped away and back to the ground. Sasuke became something other than purely impassive.

"I'm not really sure," she continued quietly. "I dislike stupid decisions, and when people make them. My goals... I need to rethink those. As for my dreams... same thing, I guess."

Kakashi stroked his masked chin with a gloved hand. "Okay. It's the brooding one's turn now."

Sasuke leant forward into his hands, elbows supported by his knees. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I don't like a lot of things. I hate more things than I actually like. My dream is an ambition. My ambition is to rebuild my clan... and to rid the world of... someone."

Sakura glanced at him cautiously out of the corner of her eye. Naruto did much the same_._

Kakashi just blinked once. "Okay... Well, you three seem... unique, perhaps. That's something. Anyway, we're going to do something as a team tomorrow."

Naruto scratched his head. "We have a mission already?"

"Something along those lines," Kakashi nodded. "We're going to be doing some survival training, but this is going to be a little bit more serious than what you did at the Academy."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "How come?"

Kakashi paused a moment. "Well... think of it like a test. A really hard test. A really hard test that you're more likely to fail than pass."

"Get to the point," Sasuke grunted.

Kakashi nodded. "It comes down to this: you're not genin yet."

"Then what was the graduation exam for?" Naruto asked.

"That was there to weed out those who weren't qualified," Kakashi explained. "This next test determines whether or not you three become genin. And, quick word of warning, there's a sixty-six percent failure rate for this thing."

Sakura sighed. "Sounds like fun."

"Oh, don't be like that," Kakashi chuckled. "Anyway, we'll meet tomorrow at five A.M. on Training Ground Three. Bring full mission gear and I'll decide whether or not you've got what it takes. See you, then!"

His hands flashed through seals again and he disappeared in another swirl of leaves.

Naruto blinked at the handful of leaves left in Kakashi's place. "Well... shit."

Sasuke grunted once more. "Agreed."

* * *

Standing a distance from the others beneath the shelter of the trees, Kurenai appeared... apprehensive. He knew where this was going.

"Hokage-sama told me something rather... unexpected," she phrased delicately. "He said that you are a..."

_Of course._

"Jinchuuriki," Koan finished for her. "What about it?"

"Will it affect your teammates?" she asked.

Koan shook his head. "Unless I'm heavily provoked, it won't."

One of her thin eyebrows rose. "Are you sure?"

"What do you know about jinchuuriki?"

Her face became firm. "Enough to know they're dangerous."

"To teammates or enemies?"

She remained inexpressive. "Jinchuuriki are a risk to be around."

"Shinobi are a risk to be around," he countered.

"That's different."

"How?"

"Very few ninja ever wield as much power as jinchuuriki."

Koan shook his head again. "Shinobi are made no less dangerous by that fact. The difference lies in number. There are only nine jinchuuriki."  
"A valid point, but I still have a responsibility to ensure the safety of my genin."

Koan blinked once, twice... thinking. "You say that like I'm not one of them."

"You were going to be one of Kakashi's," Kurenai said after a moment.

"And I suppose that makes me even more of an irregularity."

"Look, Koan, I'm not trying to separate you from the others. All I'm trying to do is keep them safe. A lot of things can go wrong out on missions, and the last thing I need is to be looking over my shoulder the entire time for a threat that may come from within our own ranks."

"I understand."

"I'm sorry if that sounded harsh, but –"

"I understand your reasoning, Kurenai," Koan interrupted with a raised hand. "But I'm not a time bomb. Jinchuuriki aren't like that. They... _we_... don't function like that, not if we have the slightest bit of control over our power."

"And how much do you have?"

"Enough to restrain myself if need be."

"And if you don't?"

"... then the deed falls to you."

Her eyes closed, and Kurenai sighed. She seemed... regretful, in a way. "I hope it never comes to that."

"As do I," he agreed.

Kurenai opened her unusual eyes again, scanning his face with a pensive gaze. "You seem oddly calm about all this."

He nodded. "I came to terms with it some time ago."

"I imagine it wasn't easy," she said.

He looked down slightly. "Something like that."

Silence fell down from the branches above them.

He didn't have anything else to add. There was nothing else for him to say. Her views were out in the open. She had a responsibility to the village, to the Hokage, and to the genin serving under her to maintain safety and security at all costs. No threats were to be tolerated against any of the three. The village was sacred, the Hokage was its head, and Kurenai's team was suddenly precious. In those circles, all those rings of immense import, he stood within and without.

Such was the duality of the jinchuuriki. To be so essential to the balance and safety of village and nation together, yet to represent such a threat to both was a strange existence indeed. But it was his, and it was the only one he knew.

He looked at Kurenai. She was impassive, composed, even as he could feel the chill of an uncomfortable silence settling over them both. He looked to the others in the clearing, still talking silently, loudly and quietly all at the same time. They were vigilant, unaware and observant all at the same time. He didn't know their lives. They didn't know his.

Maybe it would stay that way. But once again, he didn't know.

A motioning of hands from Kurenai towards the grass visible through the trees caught his attention. "Perhaps we should continue this some other time."

"Very well," he said, walking ahead of her.

"Koan?"

He stopped moving. "Yes?"

He could almost hear nervous creases spread over her as she struggled to find the right words. "I don't hold what's inside you... against you."

Koan threw a glance over his shoulder, towards her, before he kept on walking. "We'll see... sensei."

He didn't know, but there was a chance. Time would tell.

* * *

"Goodbye, Ayame-nee-chan," Naruto turned to call behind him as he walked away from his favourite ramen stand.

A warm wave and a warmer voice met his eyes. "Goodbye, Naruto-kun. And good luck for tomorrow!"

He tossed the lovely brown-haired girl behind the counter a thumbs-up. "I'll definitely pass now."

Ichiraku's was – in his totally unbiased view – the greatest source of ramen in the world. And that was no small feat. Ramen was amazing in and of itself, but the stuff they served on that well-worn bench and in those well-aged bowls was on a level beyond all others.

But there was more to it than that.

It wasn't so much about the ramen. It was about the people serving it, the two people behind the counter that worked the stoves, prepared the noodles and toiled for the perfect salty-sweetness that was the renowned broth of Ichiraku's. Teuchi and his daughter, Ayame, were good people. They were kind, they were caring, and, above all, they treated him like they would treat anyone else. It was always with a smile, always with a friendly wave, and always with understanding. They were like that with more than just him.

Naruto smiled. With a belly full of ramen and the taste of salt and pork and noodles and everything else lingering in his mouth, the darkening streets of Konoha weren't dark at all.

The sun was sinking below the hills of verdant green beyond Konoha's walls, and the sky was turning a tired auburn between the orange-lit clouds. It was a nice time in the village, when the people were heading home, the markets were closing down, and the warmth of the day faded into a comfortable neutrality carried by the evening winds of dusk.

He enjoyed it, but...

Naruto looked down as he walked.

That test kept looming over his head. That seemingly necessary yet very unnecessary test kept standing at attention, front and centre in his mind.

He knew it was going to be a team exercise. It had to be. Genin cells relied on teamwork. It was more than just him there. He felt he could rely on Sasuke and Sakura. They weren't fools, they weren't unskilled. They were just... not yet ideal.

The Academy hadn't done much to encourage a needed sense of teamwork. Class rankings and awarded titles like Rookie of the Year didn't help either. Among the boys, it had always been about competition over cohesion. It was a somewhat similar theme that ran through the girls, but more along the lines of interest in boys and materialistic things he didn't really understand that well. It had seemed to him so often that joint efforts were wasted efforts when it came down to grades and exams.

Yet again, it wasn't like he had been offered much in the way of assistance. But even that was changing.

He had Koan... sort of.

Naruto still wasn't sure what to call him, what to refer to him as. Koan was not quite a friend, not quite a source of advice, and not quite a nuisance that woke him up in the morning by throwing him out of bed and into another room. His face was still sore from that little trip.

Naruto shook his head. "How did he even get into my apartment, anyway?"

"I already told you."

Naruto recalled the somewhat unpleasant morning with a nod. "Ah, that's right. I fell asleep on the –"

He cut himself off as he looked sharply to his right. "Uh... how long have you been walking behind me?"

Koan rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. "Two minutes. You looked deep in thought."

Despite his larger size – Naruto was a bit on the short side, but he could see Koan was probably the tallest guy from their class –and relatively heavy stride, Koan was surprisingly quiet. Yet again, he barely said anything at all. It made him slightly anxious around him.

For a moment, it was just the two of them walking along streets bathed in the waning light of nightfall. For a moment, Koan's presence didn't seem awkward or forced. It felt... comfortable.

_That's new._

Naruto placed his hands in his pockets and eyed Koan for a brief moment. "Did you want something?"

"How did the test go for you?" he asked.

Naruto shook his head with a sigh. "It's tomorrow for me."

Koan nodded. "In that case, I have something to teach you."

"Teach me?" Naruto raised an eyebrow as he glanced at him. "Why?"

Koan met his gaze without hesitation. "You're lacking."

He didn't lower his eyebrow. "Lacking what?"

Koan shrugged. "Proper taijutsu, chakra control – take your pick. There's a lot to choose from."

Naruto chuckled dryly. "And I suppose that's your way of saying you're stronger than I am."

"At the moment," Koan nodded.

Naruto frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You have potential," Koan said after a moment's pause. "Not sure how much, but it's there. You just need a hand to shove you in the right direction."

Naruto laughed quietly. "And it's your hand that's going to be doing the shoving, I'm guessing."

The hint of a grin or a smirk tugged at the corner of Koan's mouth. "I do like to push things over."

Naruto shook his head with a short sigh. "Of course you do."

A smirk made headway up half of his face before Koan's stride suddenly overtook his. "Follow me."

"Where are we going?" Naruto asked, silently cursing his shorter legs as he tried to keep up.

Koan glanced over his shoulder. "You'll see."

* * *

It took them ten minutes to reach the training ground cast in fading light.

There were so many of them scattered around Konoha, all different shapes and sizes. Some had crystal-clear rivers flowing through reeded glades against grassy banks; some were composed of dense woodland with little space to manoeuvre; some were flat and featureless, equipped with the standard practice dummies for taijutsu and targets for thrown weapons.

This one was a circular clearing, perhaps fifty metres wide and lined with trees. A number of tall, thick wooden posts were strewn almost randomly across the tight-packed grass.

Naruto spared Koan a glance. "What's with the poles?"

"Fights don't stay in one place," Koan said.

"Oh," Naruto mumbled, walking a little bit closer to place a hand on the rough wood of the pole. They were meant to offer basic obstacles during spars, interrupting the flow of a battle by placing objects in the way. It was straightforward, but effective for an introduction to real-life combat.

Naruto began to turn to his right. "So what –"

Fist filled his view.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Naruto almost shouted from just below Koan's outstretched arm.

Koan retracted his limb slowly. "Just testing your reaction time."

"By almost taking my head off?" Naruto stared at him, still slightly crouched.

Koan shook his head. "That would've just been a bruise, maybe a slight fracture at worst."

Naruto stood back up. "I saw the crater you slammed Mizuki into. I somehow doubt the worst you can do with a punch is a _fracture_."

Koan tilted his head slightly to the left as he nodded. "You're right."

Naruto frowned and turned slightly. "What are you... oh, that."

The wooden post was made of thick, durable wood. It was dense, pockmarked with years of scratches and punctures from shuriken and kunai. He didn't think one punch would do so much damage. Where Koan had hit now sat a thick, gaping crack in the wood, lined with dozens of outfacing splinters and leaking sawdust. He could've sworn that the pole hadn't been leaning that much a few seconds ago either.

"That's... odd," Naruto said uncertainly.

Koan shook his head. "Not that odd. Plenty of people are stronger."

"Yeah," Naruto half-agreed, "but those people aren't genin."

"Fair point," Koan nodded.

A moment passed before Naruto said anything. "Uh, weren't you going to teach me something?"

"Yeah," Koan said, taking a few steps back. "There're two things actually. First one is this."

And then he slid a metre to his left... without moving his feet.

Naruto's eyebrows shot up. "How did you do that?"

"There are two steps to this," Koan began. "First is to layer chakra over your soles. Make sure it's a small amount."

Naruto nodded slowly as he closed his eyes to concentrate. "Alright."

For most people, the problem they faced when using chakra was quantity. They had to be careful with how much they put in for fear of exhausting their reserves too quickly.

In his case, however, the issue was control. He had a lot of chakra, more than he really knew what to do with. Jutsu rarely tired him out. Strenuous physical activity could bring fatigue to his body, but he had never really had to be afraid of running low on chakra. The problem was that he couldn't control it very well.

The feeling of gathering chakra was like tugging on a rope without his hands. It had been strange at first, but years of feeling the sensation had made it more than familiar. The harder he tugged on the rope he felt in his centre, the more chakra he pulled out. It had to be a small amount, which meant it had to be gentle pulls, which meant it took time. As such, it was no surprise that it took him more than a minute to feel out the right amount to push through his feet and layer below him.

"I think I've got it," Naruto said, looking up to Koan.

Koan nodded. "Second step is to push chakra out of the sides of your feet. If you want to go left, push from the right side; if you want to go right, push from the left, and so on. Make sure you keep feeding chakra into the ground as well."

"Alright," Naruto mumbled as he resumed concentration.

Chakra was pooling in his feet, excess leaking slowly out of his soles. All he needed to do was push a little bit of that energy out of his left or right side.

_This shouldn't be too hard. Let's see..._

He pushed very, very lightly to the left.

Naruto looked down to his feet. "Hey, I – Whoa!"

He landed right on his ass as his feet flew out from under him.

Koan chuckled. "That's what happens when you apply to much pressure."

Naruto turned his gaze up. "Should I keep practicing?"

"Yes," Koan nodded.

The pattern of 'chakra, slide a little and then land on his rear' continued for a while, the growing monotony interrupted occasionally by a quiet laugh or a tiny bit of advice from Koan. As it turned out, the technique of sliding across the ground was both a chakra control exercise and a useful trick for added mobility when it was needed.

The sun had well and truly disappeared below the horizon by the time he felt some actual improvement. The moon was out between the clouds, casting down blue and silvery light before he got used to the outlandish feeling of floating along the ground with little resistance.

"I think I've got it now," Naruto said, eyes on the ground as he watched himself slide from side to side. "It's actually kind of fun once you get used to it."

Koan nodded. "Somewhat, I guess. Now that you're used to it, we'll move on to the second part."

Naruto's eyes snapped up quickly. "And what's that?"

"Throw a punch at me," Koan said, raising a hand in a catching position. "Hard as you can."

He scratched the back of his head. "Why?"

Koan sighed. "You'll see."

Naruto stopped sliding around carelessly and shrugged as he stepped towards Koan. "Fine. Have a fist."

He cocked his fist back, felt his muscles tense, and let it fly straight into Koan's waiting palm with a satisfying _smack_ of knuckle slamming down hard on flesh.

Koan didn't even flinch.

"What was the point of that?" Naruto asked.

Koan looked down. "Do it again, but watch my legs this time."

Koan's hand went up, Naruto's fist went in and his eyes went down.

"Oh," he mumbled. "Your legs didn't move."

Koan nodded. "The point of this next one is to lock your feet in place. It stops you from getting knocked back so easily in close-quarters."

"And how do I...?" Naruto trailed off.

"Push your chakra into the ground and then compress it," Koan said.

"That sounds weird."

"It is."

He let the chakra gather in his feet again before he began to feed it into the ground.

_Compress it? How am I supposed to... oh._

If chakra had been a weird experience at first, this was in a league of its own.

"Should it feel like I'm clenching my feet into fists?"

"Yes."

"... it feels really, really weird."

"Yes. Yes, it does."

"Do you ever get used to it?"

"Not really."

"That sucks."

"The sensation might suck, but the trade-off is worth it."

"How so?"

"If I you catch my punch, you won't be sent flying."

"Wait, you're going to –"

Koan's arm became a blur.

Naruto smashed into the wooden post behind him.

"Kami, that hurts," he grumbled, clutching hands at his poor, bruised torso.

Koan was already standing in front of him. "You didn't use enough chakra."

It was thirty seconds or so of recovery before Naruto hauled himself to his feet with a groan and responded. "Apparently not."

Koan folded his arms over his chest. "Try again."

"Fine," he sighed.

Naruto focused his chakra and sent it down through his legs slowly before he let it pool in his feet. Then there was the second step. He pushed a fair bit of the gathering energy out through his feet to the ground below, allowed it to waver and billow in the grass before it found purchase in the earth, and then locked it and himself in place with that weird-ass thing that felt like he was making his feet into fists.

Koan stood up. "Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Naruto nodded.

Koan threw a slow fist forward, telegraphed to the extreme. Naruto caught it easily. It wasn't so easy to withstand.

Pressure swept through his body like a tsunami. The ground beneath his feet actually _cracked_. But he remained standing this time.

"Fuck, that hurts," Naruto groaned as he released his grip on the chakra in his feet, letting it flow back into his body and rejoin the stream.

"You're still standing this time, though," Koan said with a half-smile.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, but your punches are still a bitch and a half to take head on. How the hell are they that strong, anyway?"

Koan shrugged. "Kekkei genkai."

Naruto frowned. "What are those again?"

"Abilities passed on genetically, usually in a clan environment," Koan said.

The crease of curiosity in his brow didn't go away. "But what's yours?"

"Remember the fires that started when we fought Mizuki?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. What about them?"

"Those were from my Youton techniques," Koan said.

Naruto scratched at his neck. "Youton?"

"Mix fire and earth into one, you get Youton. It can come in different forms of volcanic material, but the main thing is lava," he explained.

He sure was frowning a lot. "That's... kind of scary."

Koan nodded. "So I can even use them, I need to maintain very high internal temperature. To stop my body from falling apart under the pressure, my muscle density is significantly higher than most. If I shove chakra directly into my muscles, they react accordingly as well."

"Ah. So that's what makes you hit like a ton of bricks."

"Yes."

"... I call unfair advantage."

"It has its downsides."

"Like what?"

"I weigh a lot."

"How's that a problem?"

"Think about it."

"Is it something to do with your speed?"

"It slows me down, yeah," Koan said with a slight nod of his head.

"Is there anything else you can teach me right now?" Naruto asked.

Koan shook his head. "Not right now. We'll save it for another time, like after tomorrow."

"Yeah," Naruto muttered, his eyes immediately downcast. "_That_."

It was frustrating. That entire test determined whether or not he actually got on a team, like it dismissed everything he had already done up to that point. Like the entire ordeal with the scroll –

"Like it'd all been for nothing, right?"

Naruto looked up quickly. "How did you..."

"I could see it in your eyes," Koan replied. "It was obvious."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I suppose it was."

"But you're prepared now, at least a little," Koan said.

"Is that why you..." Naruto trailed off.

"That's part of it," Koan answered. "The other part is that we should probably train together from now on."

Blue eyes widened just a little. "You mean that?"

Koan's eyes, dark things that they were, met his. "Yeah."

Then his eyes shifted up to the night sky. "I mean that."

* * *

_This took a little while._

_The next chapter won't take as long._

_Waiting for the story to really pick up at Chapter 5,_

_A238_


End file.
